OLD AND NEW THEORIES COMPARED. 339 



recognize any creature are due to the environment 

 (circonstances) under which it has for a long while 

 existed, and that these habits have liad such an influence 

 upon the structure of each individual of the species as to 

 have at length " (that is to say, through many successive 

 slight variations, each due to habit engendered by the 

 wishes of the animal itself), " modified this structure 

 and adapted it to the habits contracted." * 



These quotations must suffice, for the reader has 

 already had Lamarck's argument sufficiently put before 

 him. 



Variation, and consequently modification, are, ac- 

 cording to Lamarck, the outward and visible signs of 

 the impressions made upon animals and plants in the 

 course of their long and varied history, each organ 

 chronicling a time during which such and such thoughts 

 and actions dominated the creature, and specific changes 

 being the effect of certain long-continued wishes upon 

 the body, and of certain changed surroundings upon 

 the wishes. Plants and animals are living forms of faith, 

 or faiths of form, whichever the reader pleases. 



Mr. Darwin, on the other hand, repeatedly avows 

 ignorance, and profound ignorance, concerning the 

 causes of those variations which, or nothing, must be 

 the fountain-heads of species. Thus he writes of " the 

 complex and little known laws of variation." f " There is 

 also some probability in the view propounded by Andrew 

 Knight, that variability may be partly connected with 

 excess of food." | " Many laws regulate variation, some 



* ' Philosophic Zoologique,' torn. i. p. 72. f ' Origin of Species,' p. 3. 

 J Ibid. p. 5. 



z 2 



