LAMARCK’S THEORY OF DESCENT 289 
thus place a great obstacle to the extreme multiplica- 
tion of the individuals of his species. 
“Indeed, it seems as if man had taken it upon him- 
self unceasingly to reduce the number of his fellow- 
creatures; for never, I do not hesitate to say, will the 
earth be covered with the population that it could 
maintain. Several of its habitable parts would always 
be alternately very sparsely populated, although the 
time for these alternate changes would be to us 
measureless. 
“Thus by these wise precautions everything is 
preserved in the established order; the changes and 
perpetual renewals which are observable in this order 
are maintained within limits over which they cannot 
pass; the races of living beings all subsist in spite of 
their variations; the progress acquired in the improve- 
ment of the organization is not lost; everything 
which appears to be disordered, overturned, anoma- 
lous, reénters unceasingly into the general order, and 
even codperates with it; and especially and always 
the will of the sublime Author of nature and of all 
existing things is invariably executed’ (pp. 98-101). 
In the sixth chapter the author treats of the 
degradation and simplification of the structure from 
one end to the other of the animal series, proceeding, 
as he says, inversely to the general order of nature, 
from the compound to the more simple. Why he 
thus works out this idea of a general degradation is 
not very apparent, since it is out of tune with his 
views, so often elsewhere expressed, of a progressive 
evolution from the simple to the complex, and to his 
own Classification of the animal kingdom, beginning as 
it does with the simplest forms and ending with man. 
Perhaps, however, he temporarily adopts the prevail- 
ing method of beginning with the highest forms in order 
19 
