OPINIONS ON GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY 157 
We know that he was a firm believer in spontane- 
ous generation, and that he conceived that it took 
place not only in the origination of his primeval 
germs or ¢bauches, but at all later periods down to 
the present day. 
Yet Lamarck accepted Harvey’s doctrine, published 
in 1651, that all living beings arose from germs or 
eggs.* 
He must have known of Spallanzani’s experiments, 
published in 1776, even if he had not read the writ- 
ings of Treviranus (1802-1805), both of whom had ex- 
perimentally disproved the theory of the spontaneous 
generation of animalcules in putrid infusions, show- 
ing that the lowest organisms develop only from 
germs. 
The eighteenth century, though one of great in- 
tellectual activity, was, however, as regards cosmol- 
ogy, geology, general physiology or biology, a period 
of groping in the dim twilight, when the whole truth 
or even a part of it was beyond the reach of the 
ereatest geniuses, and they could only seize on half- 
truths. Lamarck, both a practical botanist, system- 
atic zodlogist, and synthetic philosopher, had done 
his best work before the rise of the experimental 
and inductive methods, when direct observation and 
experiments had begun to take the place of vague 
@ priort thinking and reasoning, so that he labored 
under a disadvantage due largely to the age in which 
he lived. 
* See his remark: ‘‘ Ov a dit avec raison que tout ce qui a vie pro- 
vient d’un weuf” (Mémoires de Physique, etc., 1797, p. 272). He 
appears, however, to have made the simplest organisms exceptions to 
this doctrine. 
