224 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



in two long didactic poems. Again, we must 

 note that Geoffroy St. Hilaire, while crediting 

 Goethe, Buff on, and others with having partly 

 anticipated Lamarck, and giving a very complete 

 bibliographical description of the subject, no- 

 where mentions Erasmus Darwin. It does not 

 seem probable that Darwin's work could have 

 been used by Lamarck and have remained wholly 

 unknown to St. Hilaire. The dates and the points 

 of internal evidence, however, in a measure seem 

 to justify the suggestion of Charles Darwin and 

 the very strong suspicion of Doctor Krause that 

 Lamarck was familiar with the Zoonomia and 

 made use of it in the development of his theory. 

 M. Charles Martins, the chief biographer of 

 Lamarck, calls attention to the fact that the great 

 French astronomer Laplace (1749-1827) sup- 

 ported Lamarck in the doctrine of the transmis- 

 sion of acquired adaptations, even as applied to 

 the origin of the mental faculties of man; and 

 in the passages quoted by Martins to sustain this 

 point, we have evidence that both Laplace and 

 Lamarck anticipated Herbert Spencer. We have 

 seen that the general doctrine of transmission of 

 acquired characters was a very ancient one, orig- 

 inating among the Greek natural philosophers. 

 It had been expressed in France by others — by 

 de Maillet, for example. The most important 

 testimony in favor of Lamarck's originality is 



