POSITION IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE 69 
“Lamarck, thy abandonment, sad as it was in thy 
old age, is better than the ephemeral glory of men 
who only maintain their reputation by sharing in the 
errors of their time. 
“ Honor tothee! Respect tothy memory! Thou 
hast died in the breach while fighting for truth, and 
the truth assures thee immortality.” 
Lamarck’s theoretical views were not known in 
Germany until many years after his death. Had 
Goethe, his contemporary (1749-1832), known of 
them, he would undoubtedly have welcomed his 
speculations, have expressed his appreciation of 
them, and Lamarck’s reputation would, in his own 
lifetime, have raised him from the obscurity of his 
later years at Paris. 
Hearty appreciation, though late in the century, 
came from Ernst Haeckel, whose bold and suggestive 
works have been so widely read. In his Hestory of 
Creation (1868) he thus estimates Lamarck’s work 
as a philosopher: 
“To him will always belong the immortal glory of 
having for the first time worked out the theory of 
descent, as an independent scientific theory of the 
first order, and as the philosophical foundation of 
the whole science of biology.” 
Referring to the Philosophie Zoologique, he says: 
“This admirable work is the first connected ex- 
position of the theory of descent carried out strictly 
into all its consequences. By its purely mechanical 
method of viewing organic nature, and the strictly 
philosophical proofs brought forward in it, Lamarck’s 
work is raised far above the prevailing dualistic views 
of his time; and with the exception of Darwin’s 
