V. 

 FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE. 



Ainsi, la nature, toujours agissante, toujours impassible, renouvelant et vari- 

 ant toute esp&ce de corps, n'en pr6servant aucun de la destruction, nous offre une 

 sc6ne imposante et sans terme, et nous montre en elle une puissance particuli^re 

 qui n'agit que par n6cessit6. — LAMARCK. 



We have now come to an important step in the 

 history of the Evolution theory ; that is, the rela- 

 tion of Erasmus Darwin to Lamarck. We shall see, 

 in treating Lamarck, that the parallelism between 

 the line of reasoning of these two men is very strik- 

 ing. They not only used the same illustrations, but 

 almost the same language; and by putting together 

 various passages from Darwin's writings, we can re- 

 construct, almost verbatim, the four principles of 

 Lamarck. Darwin's work was published in 1794 

 while as Huxley points out, in his Recherches sur 

 les causes des principaux fails physiques^ written in 

 1776, but not published until 1794, Lamarck adopted 

 Buffon's maturer and more conservative views, as 

 shown in the following sentence : — 



All the individuals of this nature are derived from similar indi- 

 viduals, which altogether constitute the entire species. ... If 

 there exist many varieties produced by the action of environment, 

 these varieties do not degenerate to the point of forming new 

 species. . . . 



It was not until iSoi, seven years after the publi- 

 cation of the Zoonomia, that Lamarck published his 



152 



