THE EVOLUTION OF THE WOULD. 257 



close of the century, we can affirm with legitimate 

 pride that they have been substantially solved by 

 modern biology and its theory of transformism ; 

 indeed, many of the phenomena of the organic world 

 are now interpreted on physical principles as com- 

 pletely as the familiar physical phenomena of inorganic 

 nature. The merit of making the first important 

 step in this difficult path, and of pointing out the way 

 to the monistic solution of all the problems of biology, 

 must be accorded to the great French scientist, Jean 

 Lamarck ; it was in 1809, the year of the birth of 

 Charles Darwin, that he published his famous Philo- 

 sophic Zoologique. In this original work not only is 

 a splendid effort made to interpret all the phenomena 

 of organic life from a monistic and physical point of 

 view, but the path is opened which alone leads to the 

 solution of the greatest enigma of this branch of 

 science — the problem of the natural origin of organic 

 species. Lamarck, who had an equally extensive 

 empirical acquaintance with zoology and botany, 

 drew the first sketch of the theory of descent ; he 

 showed that all the countless members of the plant 

 and animal kingdoms have arisen by slow trans- 

 formation from simple, common ancestral types, and 

 that it is the gradual modification of forms by 

 adaptation, in reciprocal action with heredity, which 

 has brought about this secular metamorphosis. 



I have fully appreciated the merit of Lamarck in 

 the fifth chapter, and of Darwin in the sixth and 

 seventh chapters, of the Natural History of Creation. 

 Darwin, fifty years afterwards, not only gave a solid 

 foundation to all the essential parts of the theory of 

 descent, but he filled up the lacuna, of Lamarck's 

 work by his theory of selection. Darwin reaped 



