LAMARCK’S PHILOSOPHY. FI2 
existence ; those of a more complex organization only at a 
later period. The course of the earth’s development, and 
that of its organic inhabitants, was continuous, not inter- 
rupted by violent revolutions. Life is purely a physical 
phenomenon. All the phenomena of life depend on 
mechanical, physical, and chemical causes, which are in- 
herent in the nature of matter itself. The simplest animals 
and the simplest plants, which stand at the lowest point in 
the scale of organization, have originated and still originate 
by spontaneous generation. All animate natural bodies or 
organisms are subject to the same laws as inanimate natural 
bodies or anorgana. The ideas and actions of the under- 
standing are the motional phenomena of the central nervous 
system. The will is in truth never free. Reason is only a 
higher degree of development and combination of judg- 
ments.” 
These are indeed astonishingly bold, grand, and far-reach- 
ing views, and were expressed by Lamarck sixty years ago; 
in fact, at a time when their establishment, by a mass of 
facts, was not nearly as possible as itis in our day. Indeed 
Lamarck’s work is really a complete and strictly monistic 
(mechanical) system of nature, and all the important general 
principles of monistic Biology are already enunciated by 
him : the unity of the active causes in organic and inorganic 
nature; the ultimate explanation of these causes in the 
chemical and physical properties of matter itself; the 
absence of a special vital power, or of an organic final cause ; 
the derivation of all organisms from some few, most simple 
original forms, which have come into existence by spon- 
taneous generation out of inorganic matter ; the coherent 
course of the whole earth’s history; the absence of 
VOL, I. I 
