SKETCH OF LAMARCK. 105 



SKETCH OF LAMARCK. 



THERE are two classes of scholars. Those of the one class, who 

 travel in the footsteps of their predecessors, increase the domain 

 of knowledge, and add new discoveries to those that were made before 

 them ; their labors are immediately appreciated, and they enjoy their 

 well-earned fame in full measure. Others, who leave the trodden ways, 

 emancipate themselves from traditions, and expose to the light of the 

 sun the germs of future discovery which lie buried in the teachings 

 of the present. Sometimes they are appreciated at their full value 

 during their lifetime, but more frequently they pass away, misun- 

 derstood by the scientific public of their time, which is incapable 

 of comprehending and following them. Indolence, routine, and igno- 

 rance oppose an invincible resistance against them during their career, 

 and they die isolated and forsaken. In the mean time, science ad- 

 vances, facts increase, methods are perfected, and their contempora- 

 ries who survive them gradually come up to the mark they had left. 

 Then all their forgotten services are brought into the light, justice is 

 partly done to their labors, their genius is admired, it is recognized 

 that they foresaw the future, and a tardy posthumous fame comforts 

 their pupils for the neglect which the masters had to endure during 

 the years of vain struggle for the triumph of the truth. 



Lamarck belonged to both of these classes. By his descriptive 

 labors in botany and zoology, and by the improvements which he intro- 

 duced in the classification of animals, and which were accepted by 

 his contemporaries, he gained a first place among the naturalists of 

 his time ; but his philosophical views on organic beings in general 

 were rejected, and did not even enjoy the honor of a sincere testing. 

 They were only accorded a polite silence, or treated with scornful 

 irony. 



Jean Baptist Pierre Antoine de Monet, known as the Chevalier de 

 Lamarck, was born on the 1st of August, 1744, at Bazentin, a little 

 town between Albert and Bapaume, in Picardy. He was the eleventh 

 child of Pierre de Monet, lord of the manor, who was descended from 

 an old family in the county Beam, and called only a small hereditary 

 estate his own. His father had designed him for the church, then the 

 common destination for the younger sons of noble families, and took 

 him to the Jesuit college at Amiens. This, however, was not the 

 natural vocation of our young nobleman. Everything in his family 

 associations inclined his mind toward military fame. His eldest brother 

 had fallen in the breach at the siege of Berg-op-Zoom ; the other two 

 brothers were still in the service, while France was exhausting its 

 forces in an unequal contest. His father opposed his wishes on this 

 point ; but, when the father died, Lamarck, following hia own inclina- 



