Ixxxviii INTRODUCTION 



commonly such as to arouse emotion, as often disagreeable 

 as agreeable. Their writings cannot be studied with indiffer- 

 ence : they do not leave us cold, as do the works of lesser 

 men. If we agree with them, we agree warmly ; if we 

 disagree with them, we are animated by a desire to attack 

 or abuse them. 



The apphcation of this tendency to Lamarck is obvious. 

 He defended the doctrine of organic evolution at a time 

 when it was opposed not only to the entire authority of the 

 Church and people, but also to the judgment of the leading 

 men of science. For half a century his writings stood as 

 almost the only public representation of a beHef which 

 no one now questions. Then came the Origin of Species : 

 a work which naturally and immediately superseded every 

 earlier publication, a work moreover which perhaps aroused 

 more emotion than any other work of science ever published. 

 Almost inevitably, discipleship of Darwin engendered anta- 

 gonism to Lamarck. Once evolution became an accepted 

 fact, no one studied Lamarck to be convinced of it. His 

 arguments in favour of it ceased to excite interest : and 

 attention became concentrated on minor details as to the 

 process itself. Lamarck was at once seen to have offered 

 a very different account from that of Darwin, and the whole 

 energy of Darwinian discipleship was roused to antagonism 

 by the concentration of attention on the anti-Darwinian 

 elements of the older theory. 



The scene has now changed once more : the reaction has 

 in various quarters turned against Darwin, while Lamarck 

 himself is slowly entering upon the final stage of oblivion. 

 The time is ripe for appreciating his true position in the 

 history of knowledge. 



As a philosopher, he was decidedly of the second rank. 

 He appears to have been an agnostic by reason, and a deist 

 by desire. " Since I can have no positive knowledge on 

 this subject," he writes, " I prefer to think that the whole 

 of nature is only an effect : hence I imagine and like to 

 believe in a first cause or in short a supreme power which 



