252 THE THEORIES OF EVOLUTION 



themselves Lamarckians, to the exclusion of the many 

 naturalists who are inspired by the Lamarckian views. 



In France, A. Giard, who began his transformist 

 propaganda very early, contributed a great deal to 

 the advance of Lamarckism. While he is not an un- 

 compromising Lamarckian, he has always in the 

 course of his scientific career laid much stress upon 

 the influence of the environment and the primary fac- 

 tors of evolution. He first made his view public in 

 the opening lecture of his course on the Evolution of 

 Beings in 1888. 4 



In order to illustrate the different interpretations 

 of which the Lamarckian view admits, we will review 

 in detail the theories of two typical Lamarckians, 

 Cope, an American, and Le Dantec, a Frenchman. 



Cope's system includes a theory which originated 

 with him, the theory of archaestetism, an expose of 

 which will be found in the chapter on orthogenesis 

 (Chapter XIX). His views on evolution are ex- 

 pressed as follows: 



"I propose to cite examples of the direct modify- 

 ing effect of external influences on the characters of 

 individual animals and plants. These influences fall 

 naturally into two classes, viz., the physico-chemical 

 (molecular) , and the mechanical (molar) . The mod- 

 ifications so presented are supposed to be the result 

 of the action of the causes in question, continued 



4 Published in Revue Scientifique, 1889, no. 21, pp. 641-649. 



