234 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



generation. This section covers what we would 

 now term the general principles of biology. The 

 third part is devoted to the development of the 

 nervous system, sensation, action, and intelli- 

 gence, including a theory of the origin and for- 

 mation of the nerves, and of the development of 

 i^iental faculties and ideas, lower and higher; 

 here he treats of the relation of the mind of man 

 to that of the lower animals. 



Lamarck's general philosophy of Nature 

 comes forth here. As a follower of Descartes^ 

 he is, first of all, an advocate of the search for 

 secondary causes, as opposed to arrest with su- 

 pernatural causation. He believes that we see in 

 Nature a certain order originally imposed by its 

 Author, which is manifested in the successive 

 development of life ; we thus study natural forces 

 and Nature abandoned to its laws. In this sense 

 we see Nature creating and developing without 

 cessation toward higher and higher types. Exter- 

 nal conditions do not alter this order of develop- 

 ment, but give it infinite variety by directing the 

 scale of being into an infinite number of branches. 

 Lamarck denied, absolutely, the existence of any 

 'perfecting tendency' or entelechy in Nature and 



^Descartes' "principal purpose was to explain the whole vis- 

 ible world, including the physical structure of man, in accord- 

 ance with fixed laws derived from the simplest facts of form and 

 motion. It was a philosophy of evolution as opposed to creation." 

 J. H. Bridges: The New Calendar of Great Men, 1920, p. 528. 



