A Century of Science 19 



the history of science we witness the spectacle of 

 a brilliant discoverer travelling in triumph along 

 some new path, but stopping just short of the goal 

 which subsequent exploration has revealed. There 

 it stands looming up before his face, but he is 

 blind to its presence through the excess of light 

 which he has already taken in. The intellectual 

 effort already put forth has left no surplus for any 

 further sweep of comprehension, so that further 

 advance requires a fresher mind and a new start 

 with faculties unjaded and unwarped. To dis- 

 cover a great truth usually requires a succession of 

 thinkers. Among the eminent anatomists who in 

 the earlier part of our century were occupied with 

 the classification of animals, there were some who 

 found themselves compelled to believe in phylo- 

 genetic evolution, although they could frame no sat- 

 isfactory theory to account for it. The weight of 

 evidence was already in favour of such evolution, 

 and these men could not fail to see it. Foremost 

 among them was Jean Baptiste Lamarck, whose 

 work was of supreme importance. His views were 

 stated in 1809 in his "Philosophic Zoologique," 

 and further illustrated in 1815, in his voluminous 

 treatise on invertebrate animals. Lamarck en- 

 tirely rejected the notion of special creations, and 

 he pointed out some of the important factors in evo- 



