70 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 
work, which appeared just half a century later, we 
know of none which we could, in this respect, place 
by the side of the Ph2losophte Zoologique. How 
far it was in advance of its time is perhaps best seen 
from the circumstance that it was not understood by 
most men, and for fifty years was not spoken of at 
all. Cuvier, Lamarck’s greatest opponent, in his 
Report on the Progress of Natural Sctence, in which 
the most unimportant anatomical investigations are 
enumerated, does not devote a single word to this 
work, which forms an epoch in science. Goethe, also, 
who took such a lively interest in the French nature- 
philosophy and in the ‘thoughts of kindred minds 
beyond the Rhine,’ nowhere mentions Lamarck, and 
does not seem to have known the LP%zlosophie Zo- 
ologique at all.” 
Again in 1882 Haeckel writes :* 
“ We regard it as a truly tragic fact that the Pfz- 
losophie Zoologique of Lamarck, one of the greatest 
productions of the great literary period of the begin- 
ning of our century, received at first only the slight- 
est notice, and within a few years became wholly 
forgotten. . . . Not until fully fifty years later, 
when Darwin breathed new life into the transforma- 
tion views founded therein, was the buried treasure 
again recovered, and we cannot refrain from regarding 
it as the most complete presentation of the develop- 
ment theory before Darwin. 
“While Lamarck clearly expressed all the essential 
fundamental ideas of our present doctrine of descent ; 
and excites our admiration at the depth of his mor- 
phological knowledge, he none the less surprises us 
by the prophetic (vorausschauende) clearness of his 
physiological conceptions.” 
* Die Naturanschauung von Darwin, Goethe und Lamarck, Jena, 
1882. 
