Lamarck's Crusades. 171 



of evolution. He accepted the idea of BufTon, that 

 species were the results of modifications in the slow 

 generation of life, and added that these modifica- 

 tions arose from the actions and requirements of the 

 animals themselves. 



This work produced little or no immediate effect, 

 but it undoubtedly influenced many naturalists who 

 followed, including Lamarck, Lyell, Spencer, and, 

 chief of all, the grandson of Erasmus, Charles Dar- 

 win, who in the present age stood as the leading 

 apostle of the theory. 



In 1 80 1 Lamarck began his series of crusades 

 against the opponents of evolution. Bold, frank, 

 imperious in his mental sovereignty, he had neither 

 the caution of Buffon nor the deference to the 

 Church and public opinion shown by many of his 

 predecessors. What he thought, he wrote, and what 

 he believed in, he announced to the world, fortifying 

 it with proofs from the abundant resources of his 

 mind, stored with the results of a lifetime of research. 

 Of this giant of science Charles Darwin writes : " He 

 first did the eminent service of arousing attention to 

 the probability of all change, in the organic as well 

 as in the inorganic world, being the result of law and 

 not of miraculous interposition. Lamarck seems to 

 have been chiefly led to his conclusion on the grad- 

 ual change of species by the difficulty of distinguish- 

 ing species and varieties, by the almost perfect 

 gradation of forms in certain groups, and by the 

 analogy of domestic productions. With respect to 

 the means of modification, he attributed something 

 to the direct action of the physical conditions of 



