THE PATti Of EVOLUTION 



spontaneous generation which he advocated, though 

 since held in later days by many learned men, has 

 now lost all support by the disproof of its em- 

 pirical occurrence. He rendered to mankind the 

 eminent service of arousing attention to the proba- 

 bility that all change in the organic, as well as in the 

 inorganic, world was the result of law, and not of 

 miraculous interposition. His theories of the origin 

 of species were, that the organs of an animal were 

 modified by the desires and will of the individual, in 

 response to external conditions. The changes thus in- 

 duced would be transmitted to their offspring, subject, 

 moreover, to like changes from new conditions, so that, 

 if illimitable time was granted, it would account for 

 the formation of the highest order of animals from 

 the lowest organisms. In accordance with this doc- 

 trine, he held that man himself was derived from the 

 species next below him, the anthropoid apes. These, 

 opinions openly and forcibly expressed, though 

 received with general indignation and ridicule at the 

 time, and for generations of those who came after 

 him, now serve to make his name illustrious. They 

 embody the same idea subsequently demonstrated by 

 Darwin and by Wallace to be true, and now elaborated 

 by them into the doctrine of Natural Selection. 



Soon after Lamarck's appointment to his Zoolog- 

 ical Chair his sight began to fail, so that he was 



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