LAMARCK'S PHILOSOPHICAL POSITION. 253 



but in good truth authority is a hard thing to 

 weigh. 



"Nor again in spite of the many and severe con- 

 ditions which a judgment n.ust fulfil before it can be 

 declared good is it quite certain that those whom 

 public opinion has declared to be authorities, are 

 always right in the conclusions they arrive at. 



" Positive facts are the only solid ground for man ; 

 the deductions he draws from them are a very different 

 matter. Outside the facts of nature all is a question of 

 probabilities, and the most that can be said is that some 

 conclusions are more probable than others." 



Lamarck's poverty was perhaps one main reason 

 of the ease with which it was found possible to neglect 

 his philosophical opinions. Science is not a kingdom 

 into which a poor man can enter easily, if he happens 

 to differ from a philosopher who gives good dinners, 

 and has " his sisters and his cousins and his aunts " 

 to play the part of chorus to him. Lamarck's two 

 daughters do not appear to have been the kind of 

 persons who could make effective sisters or cousins or 

 aunts. Men of science are of like passions even with 

 the other holy ones who have set themselves up in 

 all ages as the pastors and prophets of mankind. The 

 saint has commonly deemed it to be for the interests of 

 saintliness that he should strain a point or two in his 

 own favour and the more so according as his reputa- 

 tion for an appearance of candour has been the better 

 earned. If, then, Lamarck's opponents could keep 

 choruses, while Lamarck had nothing to fall back upon 

 but the merits of his case only, it is not surprising 



