Lamarck 91 



" 2. New wants in animals give rise to new movements which 

 produce organs. 



" 3. The development of these organs is in proportion to their 

 employment. 



"4. New developments are transmitted to offspring." 



He stipported especially the last two propositions by a 

 series of examples as to the effects of use and disuse ; 

 and the most famous of these, the theory that giraffes 

 had produced their long necks by contintially stretch- 

 ing up towards the trees on which they fed, is well 

 known to everyone. However, the ingenious specula- 

 tions of Lamarck were tmsupported by a sufficient range 

 of actual knowledge of anatomy, and lacked experi- 

 mental proof. He entirely failed to convince his con- 

 temporaries; and Darwin himself, in a letter to Lyell, 

 declared that he had gained nothing from two readings 

 of Lamarck's book. There can be little doubt but that 

 several Continental writers, in partictilar Haeckel, 

 have exaggerated Lamarck's services to the develop- 

 ment of the idea of evolution. On the other hand, 

 Lyell, although he strongly opposed the ideas of La- 

 marck and some curious notions of progressional crea- 

 tion due to the great Agassiz, had prepared the way 

 for Darwin by his adv^ocacy of natural causes and slow 

 changes in opposition to the catastrophic and miracu- 

 lous views in vogue. Above all, Herbert Spencer had 

 argued most strenuously in fav@ur of evolution. Thus, 

 in an important passage qtioted by Mr. Clodd from the 

 Leader of March 20, 1852, Spencer had written as 

 follows : 



"Those who cavalierly reject the theory of evolution, as not n *;/ 

 adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their 

 own theory is not supported by facts at all. Like the majority 

 of men who are born to a given belief, they demand the most 

 rigorous proof of any adverse belief, but assume that their own 



