20 SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



of facts and observations justifying his theory before he 

 announced it to the world. 



A great difference between Lamarck and Darwin 

 exists, not only in their two theories as to the mode of 

 origin of the vast diversified series of kinds or species of 

 plants and animals, but in their way of stating and deal- 

 ing with the theory which each thought out and gave 

 to the world. Lamarck had a great knowledge of the 

 species of plants and animals, partly through having 

 collected specimens himself when he was an officer in 

 the French Republican army which was employed on 

 the Mediterranean shores of France and Italy more than 

 a hundred years ago, and partly through his later official 

 position in the great natural history museum at Paris, 

 where large collections passed through his hands. He was 

 a man of very keen insight and excellent method, and did 

 more to plan out a natural and satisfactory " classification " 

 of animals than any one between his own day and that 

 of Linnaeus. His theory of the origin of species was 

 essentially an opposition to the then popular view that 

 the species of living things have been made by the 

 Creator so as to fit the conditions in which they live. 

 Lamarck contradicted this view, and said in so many 

 words that the real fact is that the peculiar specific 

 characters of animals or of plants have not been created 

 for their conditions, but, on the contrary, that the 

 conditions in which they live have created the peculiarities 

 of living things. In so far his conception was the same 

 as Darwin's. But Lamarck then said to himself: How 

 do the conditions create the peculiarities of different 

 living things? And he answered this question by an 

 ingenious guess, which he published to the world in a 

 book called Philosophical Zoology, without taking any 

 steps to test the truth of his guess. 



That is where Lamarck's method and attitude as a 



