16 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 
The meditations, the thoughts and aspirations of a 
contemplative nature like his, in his hours of work or 
leisure, in some degree consoled the budding philoso- 
pher during this period of uncongenial labor, and 
when he did have an opportunity of communicating 
his ideas to his friends, of discussing them, of defend- 
ing them against objection, the hardships of his work- 
aday life were for the time forgotten. In his ardor 
for science all the uncongenial experiences of his life 
as a bank clerk vanished. Like many another ris- 
ing genius in art, literature, or science, his.zeal for 
knowledge and investigation in those days of grinding 
poverty fed the fires of his genius, and this was the 
light which throughout his long poverty-stricken life 
shed a golden lustre on his toilsome existence. He 
did not then know that the great Linné, the father of 
the science he was to illuminate and so greatly to ex- 
pand, also began life in extreme poverty, and eked out 
his scanty livelihood by mending over again for his own 
use the cast-off shoes of his fellow-students. (Cuvier.) 
Bourguin* tells us that Lamarck’s medical course 
lasted four years, and this period of severe study— 
for he must have made it such—evidently laid the 
best possible foundation that Paris could then afford 
for his after studies. He seems, however, to have 
wavered in his intentions of making medicine his 
life work, for he possessed a decided taste for music. 
His eldest brother, the Chevalier de Bazentin, strongly 
opposed, and induced him to abandon this project, 
though not without difficulty. 
* Les Grand Naturalists Francais au Commencement du XIX 
Srécle. 
