in THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE 105 



first man whose conclusions on the subject excited 

 much attention ' ; rendering ' the eminent service 

 of arousing attention to the probability of all change 

 in the organic, as well as in the inorganic world, 

 being the result of law, and not of miraculous inter- 

 position.' Lamarck was born at Bezantin, in Picardy, 

 in 1744. Intended for the Church, he chose the 

 army, but an injury resulting from a practical joke 

 cut short his career as a soldier. He then became a 

 banker's clerk, in which occupation he secured leisure 

 for his favourite pursuit of natural history. Through 

 Buffon's influence he procured a civil appointment, 

 and ultimately became a colleague of Cuvier and 

 Geoffrey St. Hilaire in the Museum of Natural 

 History at Paris. Of Cuvier it will here suffice to 

 say that he remained to the end of his life a believer 

 in special creation, or, what amounts to the same 

 thing, in a series of special creations which, he held, 

 followed catastrophic annihilations of prior plants 

 and animals. Although orthodox by conviction, 

 his researches told against his tenets, because his im- 

 portant work in the reconstruction of skeletons of long 

 extinct animals laid the foundation of palaeontology. 

 To Lamarck, says Haeckel, ' will always belong 

 the immortal glory of having for the first time 

 worked out the Theory of Descent as an inde- 

 pendent scientific theory of the first order, and as 

 the philosophical foundation of the whole science 

 of Biology.' He taught that in the beginnings of 

 life only the very simplest and lowest animals 

 and plants came into existence ; those of more com- 

 plex structure developing from these ; man himself 

 being descended from ape-like mammals. For the 



