CONCLUSION 339 



when he compares our present mental attitude to that 

 of thinkers living fifty years ago. One of the most 

 striking, from a practical point of view, is the gradual 

 substitution of the determinist point of view for the 

 belief in free will. If man is a creature of his envi- 

 ronment, all our ideas on society and on education, 

 all our methods for attaining what seems to us right 

 are bound to undergo a radical change. 



It may seem strange to mention Lamarck in con- 

 nection with this very modern line of thought, for 

 he failed to exert any influence in this direction; but 

 we find in his writings a negation of free will and an 

 affirmation of the personal irresponsibility of man, a 

 product of his environment. 1 Such was the conclu- 

 sion of his transf ormist theories. His contemporaries 

 were not ripe for accepting his conceptions, and they 

 were even less likely to draw from them such conclu- 

 sions. It is to Darwin, to the stir and excitement 

 created in every mind by the publication of his books 

 that credit is due for the rise and the rapid progress 

 made by the new ideas. 



We must, however, draw a sharp line between the 

 transformist side of the Darwinian theories and their 

 selectionist side. While Darwinian transf ormism has 

 perhaps contributed more to the emancipation of the 

 human mind than any other scientific theoiy, the 



i La Philosophic zoologique et le systeme analytique d«s connaissances 

 positives de I'homme, passim. 



