RELATION BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION 375 
as having existed from all time, is to me an abstract 
idea, baseless, limitless, improbable, and not satis- 
factory to my reason. Being unable to know any- 
thing positive in this respect, and having no means 
of reasoning on this subject, I much prefer to think 
that all nature is only a result: hence, I suppose, 
and I am glad to admit it, a first cause, in a word, a 
supreme power which has given existence to nature, 
and which has made it in all respects what it is.’’ * 
‘ Nature, that immense totality of different beings 
and bodies, in every part of which exists an eternal 
circle of movements and changes regulated by law; 
totality alone unchangeable, so long as it pleases its 
SUBLIME AUTHOR to cause its existence, should be 
regarded as a whole constituted by its parts, for 
a purpose which its Author alone knows, and not 
exclusively for any one of them. 
““ Each part is necessarily obliged to change, and 
to cease to be one in order to constitute another, 
with interests opposed to those of all; and if it has 
the power of reasoning it finds this whole imperfect. 
In reality, however, this whole is perfect and com- 
pletely fulfils the end for which it was designed.’’ + 
Lamarck’s work on general philosophy ¢ was writ- 
ten near the end of his life, in 1820. He begins his 
““ Discours préliminaire’’ by referring to the sudden 
loss of his eyesight, his work on the invertebrate ani- 
mals being thereby interrupted. The book was, he 
says, ‘‘rapidly’’ dictated to his daughter, and the 
ease with which he dictated was due, he says, to his 
long-continued habit of meditating on the facts he 
had observed. 
PMloc. cht, 1, Pei 30l- + Loc. cit., ii., p. 465. 
t Systeme analytique des Connaissances de l’ Homme, etc. 
