318 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



24. 

 Tlie 

 ' Vestiges. ' 



they belong, therefore, more to the history of philo- 

 sophical than to that of scientific thought. There is, 

 however, one instance of which it is necessary to take 

 a passing notice. 



In the year 1844 a book appeared which in nine 

 years, up to 1853, ran through nine large editions. It 

 was anonymous,^ and bore 



trau.smissible to the offspring." i. 

 That " indefinite divergence " from 

 the original type is "prevented." 

 5. That " tiie intermixture of dis- 

 tinct species is guarded against by 

 the aversion of the individuals com- 

 posing them to sexual union." 6. 

 That "it appears that species have 

 a real existence in nature, and that 

 each was endowed, at the time of 

 its creation, with the attributes 

 and organisation by which it is 

 now distinguished." Tlie reviewers 

 of Lyell's work — such as Whewell 

 {'Quarterly,' vol. xlvii. p. 113) — 

 treat Lamarck with much less 

 gravity than Lyell himself, who 

 evidently had studied the ' Philoso- 

 phic Zoologique ' carefully and with 

 much interest ; which, I am afraid, 

 was not the case with many others 

 who then and long after only quoted 

 certain extreme passages and ex- 

 amples which had lieen spread in 

 general literature in a garbled 

 fashion. Contrast in this respect 

 what Lyell wrote to G. Mantell in 

 1827 (' Life of Lyell,' vol. i. p. 168), 

 wliere he admits having " devoured 

 Lamarck with pleasure," and though 

 disagreeing with him, admits that 

 it is impossible to say " what 

 changes species may really under- 

 go," with the remarks of Charles 

 Darwin — otherwise so careful and 

 moderate — when lie talks of " La- 

 marck nonsense " (" Darwin's Life 

 and Letters,' p. 23) and his " verit- 

 able rubbish" (p. 29), and attrib- 

 utes to him statements which such 

 a careful student of his writings as 



tlie title ' Vestiges of the 



Prof. Packard has been unable to 

 trace (see his work on ' Lamarck,' 

 1901, p. 74). One would be in- 

 clined to agree with Darwin that 

 such absurdities have done the sub- 

 ject more harm than gt)od, but to 

 attribute them rather to garbled 

 paraphrases and quotations by La- 

 marck'scritics (see Darwin to Hooker, 

 18.53, 'Life,' vol. ii. p. 39) than to 

 Lamarck himself. More than thirty 

 years after the publication of the 

 ' Principles,' when, in consequence 

 of the appearance of the ' Origin of 

 Species,' the subject of Transmuta- 

 tion was much discussed, Lj'ell 

 wrote to Darwin that he had re- 

 read Lamarck, and admitted that, 

 " remembering when his book was 

 written, he felt he had done him 

 [Lamarck] injustice" ('Life, &c. , 

 of Sir Charles Lyell,' 1881, vol. ii. 

 p. 365). In the same letter Lyell 

 states that forty years ago (1823) 

 Provost, a pupil of Cuvier's, told 

 him his conviction " that Cuvier 

 thought species not real, but that 

 science could not advance without 

 assuming that thej^ were so." 



^ Tlie anonymity of the work was 

 long maintained, and though, after 

 various guesses as to the author- 

 ship — attributing it, e.g., to Lyell or 

 Darwin— had been made, it was gen- 

 erally believed that Robert Cham- 

 bers (1802-1871) was the author, 

 this was not jjublicly admitted till 

 Alex. Ireland — the last survivor of 

 the few friends to whom the secret 

 was committed — published (1884) 

 the twelfth edition of the book, 



