302 EVOLUTION IN BIOLOGY. 



evolution with a firmer scientific basis than it already 

 possessed. Moreover, whatever the value of Goethe's 

 labours in that field, they were not published before 

 1820, long after evolutionism had taken a new departure 

 from the works of Treviranus and Lamarck the first of 

 its advocates who were equipped for their task with the 

 needful large and accurate knowledge of the phenomena 

 of life, as a whole. It is remarkable that each of these 

 writers seems to have been led, independently and con- 

 temporaneously, to invent the same name of " Biology " 

 for the science of the phenomena of life ; and thus, fol- 

 lowing Buff on, to have recognised the essential unity of 

 these phenomena, and their contradistinction from those 

 of inanimate nature. And it is hard to say whether 

 Lamarck or Treviranus has the priority in propounding 

 the main thesis of the doctrine of evolution ; for though 

 the first volume of Treviranus's " Biologie " appeared 

 only in 1802, he says, in the preface to his later work, 

 the " Erscheinungen und Gesetze des organischen Le- 

 bens," dated 1831, that he wrote the first volume of the 

 " Biologie " " nearly five-and-thirty years ago," or about 

 1796. 



Now, in 1794, there is evidence that Lamarck held 

 doctrines which present a striking contrast to those 

 which are to be found in the " Philosophic Zoologique," 

 as the following passages show : 



u 685. Quoique mon unique objet dans cet article n'ait 6t6 que 

 de traiter de la cause physique de Fentretien de la vie des etres or- 

 ganiques, raalgr6 ccla j'ai ose avancer en debutant, que Texistence 



