174 VESTIGES OF THE 



Early in this century, M. Lamarck, a naturalist of 

 the highest character, suggested an hypothesis of organic 

 progress which deservedly incuri-ed much ridicule, al- 

 though it contained a glimmer of the truth. He sur- 

 mised, and endeavoured, with a great deal of ingenuity, 

 to 23rove, that one being advanced in the course of 

 generations to another, in consequence merely of its 

 experience of wants calling for the exercise of its facul- 

 ties in a particular direction, by which exercise new 

 developments of organs to©k place, ending in variations 

 sufficient to constitute a new species. Thus he thought 

 that a bird would be driven by necessity to seek its food 

 in the water, and that, in its efforts to swim, the out- 

 stretching of its claws would lead to the expansion of 

 the intermediate membranes, and it would thus become 

 web-footed. Now it is possible that wants and the ex- 

 ercise of faculties have entered in some manner into 

 the production of the phenomena which we have been 

 considering ; but certainly not in the way suggested by 

 Lamarck, whose whole notion is obviously so inadequate 

 tD account for the rise of the ors-anic kinijdoms, that we 

 only can place it with pity among the follies of the wise. 

 Had tlio laws of organic development been known in his 

 time, his theory might have been of a more imposing 

 kind. It is upon these that the present hypothesis is 

 mainly founded. I take existing natural means, and 

 show them to have been capable of producing all the 

 existing organisms, with the simple and easily conceiv- 

 able aid of a highei- generative law, which we perhaps 

 still see operating upon a limited scale. I also go beyond 

 the French philosopher to a very important point, the 

 original Divine conception of all the forms of being 

 which these natviral laws were only instruments in 

 working out and realising. The actuality of such a 



