254 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



that he should have found himself neglected by the 

 scientists of his own time. Moreover he was too old to 

 have undertaken such an unequal contest. If he had 

 been twenty years younger when he began it, he would 

 probably have enjoyed his full measure of success 

 before he died. 



Not that Lamarck can claim, as a thinker, to stand 

 on the same level with Dr. Darwin, and still less so 

 with Buffon. He attempted to go too fast and too far. 

 Seeing that if we accept descent with modification, 

 the question arises whether what we call life and con- 

 sciousness may not themselves be evolved from some 

 thing or things which looked at one time so little 

 living and conscious that we call them inanimate and 

 being anxious to see his theory reach, and to follow 

 it, as far back as possible, he speculates about the 

 origin of life ; having formed a theory thereon, he is 

 more inclined to interpret the phenomena of lower 

 animal life so as to make them fit in with his theory, 

 than as he would have interpreted them if there had 

 been no theory at stake. 



Thus his denial that sensation, and much more, 

 intelligence and deliberate action, can exist without a 

 brain and a nervous system, has led him to deny 

 sensation, consciousness, and intelligence to many 

 animals which act in such manner as would certainly 

 have made him say that they feel and know what they 

 are about, if lie had formed no theory about brains and 

 nervous systems. 



Nothing can be more different than the manners in 

 which Lamarck and Dr. Darwin wrote on this head. 



