WHEN DID LAMARCK’S VIEWS CHANGE? 227, 
and patronage in early life, frequenting his house, 
and was fora time the travelling companion of Buf- 
fon’sson. It should seem most natural that he would 
have been personally influenced by his great prede- 
cessor, but we see no indubitable trace of such influ- 
ence in his writings. Lamarckism is not Buffonism. 
It comprises in the main quite a different, more varied 
and comprehensive set of factors.* 
Was Lamarck influenced by the biological writings 
of Haller, Bonnet, or by the philosophic views of Con- 
dillac, whose Essaz sur 2 Origine des Connatssances 
humaincs appeared in 1786; or of Condorcet, whom 
he must personally have known, and whose Fsquzsse 
aun Tableau historique des Progres del’ Esprit hu- 
main was published in1794?+ In one case only in La- 
marck’s works do we find reference to these thinkers. 
Was Lamarck, as the result of his botanical studies 
from 1768 to 1793, and being puzzled, as system- 
atic botanists are, by the variations of the more plastic 
species of plants, led tu deny the fixity of species? 
We have been unable to find any indications of a 
change of views in his botanical writings, though his 
papers are prefaced by philosophical reflections. 
It would indeed be interesting to know what led 
Lamarck to change his views. Without any explana- 
* See the comparative summary of the views of the founders of 
evolution at the end of Chapter XVII. 
+ While Rousseau was living at Montmorency “‘ his thoughts wan- 
dered confusedly round the notion of a treatise to be called ‘ Sensitive 
Morality or the Materialism of the Age,’ the object of which was to 
examine the influence of external agencies, such as light, darkness, 
sound, seasons, food, noise, silence, motion, rest, on our corporeal 
machine, and thus, indirectly, upon the soul also.”—Aousseau, by 
John Morley (p. 164). 
