210 EVOLUTION IN BIOLOGY vi 



tion with a firmer scientific basis than it already 

 possessed. Moreover, whatever the value of 

 Goethe's labours in that field, they were not 

 published before 1820, long after evolutionism had 

 taken a new departure from the works of Trevir- 

 anus and Lamarck the first of its advocates who 

 were equipped for their task with the needful 

 large and accurate knowledge of the phenomena of 

 life, as a whole. It is remarkable that each of 

 these writers seems to have been led, independ- 

 ently and contemporaneously, to invent the same 

 name of " Biology " for the science of the pheno- 

 mena of life ; and thus, following Buffon, to have 

 recognised the essential unity of these phenomena, 

 and their contradistinction from those of inanimate 

 nature. And it is hard to say whether Lamarck 

 or Treviranus has the priority in propounding the 

 main thesis of the doctrine of evolution ; for 

 though the first volume of Treviranus's " Biologie " 

 appeared only in 1802, he says, in the preface to 

 his later work, the " Erscheinungen und Gesetze 

 des organischen Lebens," dated 1831, that he 

 wrote the first volume of the " Biologie " " nearly 

 five-and-thirty years ago/' or about 1796. 



Now, in 1794, there is evidence that Lamarck 

 held doctrines which present a striking contrast to 

 those which are to be found in the " Philosophic 

 Zoologique," as the following passages show : 



" 685. Quoique mon unique objet dans cet article n'ait et6que 

 de traiter de la cause physique de 1'entretien de la vie des etres 



