30 Unconscious Memory 



though frequently deUghted with his work, I found it 

 impossible to press him into my service. 



The pre-eminent claim of Buffon to be considered as 

 the father of the modern doctrine of evolution cannot be 

 reasonably disputed, though he was doubtless led to his 

 conclusions by the works of Descartes and Leibnitz, of 

 both of \\'hom he was an avowed and very warm admirer. 

 His claim does not rest upon a passage here or there, but 

 upon the spirit of forty quartos written over a period of 

 about as many, years. Nevertheless he wrote, as I have 

 shown in " Evolution, Old and New," of set purpose 

 enigmaticalty, whereas there was no beating about the 

 bush with Dr. Darwin. He speaks straight out, and Dr. 

 Krause is justified in saying of him " that he was the first 

 who proposed and persistently carried out a well-rounded 

 theory " of evolution. 



I now turned to Lamarck. I read the first volume of 

 the " Philosophic Zoologique," analj'sed it and translated 

 the most important parts. The second volume was beside 

 my purpose, dealing as it does rather with the origin of 

 life than of species, and travelling too fast and too far for 

 me to be able to keep up with him. Again I was astonished 

 at the little mention Mr. Darwin had made of this illus- 

 trious writer, at the manner in which he had motioned 

 him away, as it were, with his hand in the first edition of 

 the " Origin of Species," and at the brevity' and imperfec- 

 tion of the remarks made upon him in the subsequent 

 historical sketch. 



I got Isidore Geoffroy's " Histoire Naturelle Generale," 

 which Mr. Darwin commends in the note on the second 

 page of the historical sketch, as giving " an excellent 

 history of opinion " upon the subject of evolution, and a 

 full account of Buffon's conclusions upon the same subject. 

 This at least is what I supposed Mr. Darwin to mean. 

 What he said was that Isidore Geoffroy gives an excellent 

 history of opinion on the subject of the date of the first 

 publication of Lamarck, and that in his work there is a 



