422 Rev. S. Haughton on the Origin of Species. 



presence, which corrupts his reasoning, and discloses the motive 

 force of his entire system. This hidden spring of action and 

 theorizing is a profound and, as many think, a well-founded con- 

 tempt for humanity, which pervades his writings as thoroughly 

 as it does the " Voyage to the Houyhnhnms." Lamarck was too 

 quick-witted and acute an observer, however deficient he may 

 have been as a reasoner, to have believed his own theory, the 

 real mainspring of which is the desire to degrade man into an 

 intelligent baboon or Yahoo ; what difference is there in a name ! 

 In his desire to do so, he overlooks every fact at variance with 

 his foregone conclusion, and writes of mankind with a virulence 

 which, though devoid of the wit of Swift, springs from the same 

 profound and unalterable conviction of the worthlessness of the 

 creature he describes : — 



" Si Newton, Bacon, Montesquieu, Voltaire, et tant d'autres 

 hommes ont honore l'espece humaine par l'etendue de leur 

 intelligence et de leur genie, combien ne la rapprochent pas de 

 l'animal cette quantite d'hommes bruts, ignorans, en proie aux 

 prejuges les plus absurdes, et constamrnent asservis par leurs 

 habitudes, qui cependant composent la masse principale chez 

 toutes les nations ? " * 



Lamarck's contempt for his species is again shown in the 

 strange list of resemblances he selects for his comparison between 

 man and the chimpanzee — a comparison fully as degrading as 

 Swift's mock imitation of a naturalist's description of a Yahoo. 



Lamarck's theory consists in the assertion of the following 

 laws, six in number, which he dignifies with the title of Laws of 

 Nature : — 



I. Law of Specialization of Function, by which a function at 

 first general, or belonging to the whole body, is determined to 

 a particular organ. 



II. Law of Nutrition producing Death by the forced inequality 

 between the materials fixed by assimilation and removed by 

 excretion. This law is intended to account for death, which is 

 a puzzle to the naturalists. 



III. Law of Movement of Complex Fluids in Canals. This 

 law I profess my inability to understand. In the statement of 

 it, Lamarck, who, like most naturalists, is unacquainted with 

 physics, and untrained in the severe discipline of mathematical 

 reasoning, attributes properties to fluids in motion which must 

 be considered by lookers-on as little short of miraculous. 



IV. Law of Change of Composition of Fluids in Circulation. 

 This law is as obscure, and as miraculous in its results, as the 



* Reoherches sur 1' Organisation des Corps Vivans, p. 127. Paris, 

 27 Floreal, An X. 



