SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION 



first life processes were produced by mechanical 

 means in the laboratory. 



According to Lamarck, those simple primeval 

 organisms were gradually transformed through 

 changes in their conditions of life, leading to the 

 greater use of some and to the disuse of other 

 organs, to adaptations to changed environments, 

 ?,nd to the transmission of new characters thus 

 acquired by way of heredity. Similar ideas were 

 advanced by Geoffroy Saint Hilaire and Oken. 

 The misfortune of these pioneers of resurrected 

 evolution was, that the palaeontological and em- 

 bryological material for the substantiation of this 

 theory was not yet sufficient to silence the oppo- 

 sition. And as the new. ideas were at once vio- 

 lently assailed by reactionary thought, the cham- 

 pions of the new science had a hard stand. When 

 Cuvier, the founder of comparative anatomy, 

 challenged Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, in 1830, to a 

 public debate, the old ideas of the Mosaic creation 

 theory carried the day and remained victorious 

 for thirty years longer. 



But the general results of Cuvier's own spe- 

 cialty, comparative anatomy, led to the elabora- 

 tion of a natural system of classification, which 

 stands as an eloquent proof of the interrelation 

 of forms claimed by Lamarck. And the flimsy 



