14 EVOLUTIONS OF ORGANIZATION. 



cially nourishing fluids, it must follow that two or 

 more tentacles will appear and develop insensibly 

 in those circumstances on the points referred to. 

 This is, without doubt, what has happened in all the 

 races of gasteropods whose wants have given rise 

 to the habit of touching bodies with the parts of 

 their head." * Thus he allowed himself to pass in the 

 most guileless way, like many a subsequent writer, 

 from "je consols" to " sans doute" 



Lamarck espoused the doctrine of spontaneous 

 generation, as he was bound logically from his 

 point of view to do. His contention was that it 

 was improbable that under the government of the 

 material universe by secondary causes there should 

 be a deviation from that system either in the first 

 appearance or subsequent evolution of life ; and he 

 failed, erroneously, as I believe, to see that in the 

 phenomena of life any element was present differ- 

 ent in kind from the phenomena of dead matter. 

 " Certes," he says, "the power which has made the 

 animals has made them all that they are, and en- 

 dowed them with the faculties observed in each, by 

 giving an organization fitted to produce them. 

 Observation authorizes us to recognize that this 

 power is Nature, and that she is the product of the 

 will of the Supreme Being, who has made her what 



1 Op. cit. p. 59. 



