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ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
reproduction, Competition, Adaptation and Selection and Survival, Lamarck’s 
loose arrangement of his four factors, Growth, Response to Needs, Effects 
of Use and Disuse and the Inheritance of Acquired Characters, can not 
but seem weak and inconclusive, particularly when we remember that 
for the vegetable kingdom Lamarck was obliged to fall back upon Buffon’s 
factor, the Direct Action of the Environment, while Darwin’s closely-knit 
argument was applicable to the entire living world. Of course Lamarck 
never could have known how utterly inadequate his system was to explain 
variations in floral structures through which they are adapted to fertilization 
by insect agency, or to account for protective coloration and mimicry among 
animals. 
Cuvier is said to have killed Lamarckism by his ridicule of it, but Dar¬ 
winism was born with a stronger constitution, for it has survived many times 
the amount of sarcasm and contempt that were aimed at Lamarck’s philos¬ 
ophy. Lamarck’s times were undoubtedly unfavorable to a fair examina¬ 
tion of his ideas. Fifty years later, however, Darwin not only conquered a 
hearing for his own theories, but actually opened the way for a just con¬ 
sideration of Lamarck’s. It is often said that Darwin succeeded because 
the times were ripe for the acceptance of the evolution theory when he 
appeared as its advocate; but Darwin himself denied this, and I am at a 
loss to understand how such an opinion can be entertained in face of the 
plain history of the subject to which I have referred and which shows that 
Darwin gained his adherents one by one, and only by much argument and 
persuasion, during at least a decade following the publication of “The 
Origin of Species.” Lamarck did not fail because of Cuvier’s ridicule, and 
Darwin did not prevail because the time of his appearance was opportune 
as to the trend of philosophical and scientific opinion. Darwin created his 
own opportunity by long years of preparatory work and forced the issue by 
the final presentation of a convincing chain of reasoning, underlain by his 
discovery of an efficient cause of progressive development. Professor 
Osborn 1 has correctly and strikingly summarized the causes of Darwin’s 
ability “to leap along over the progress of centuries” as (1) his patience and 
caution, (2) his diligence in seeking “a hundred facts and observations where 
his predecessors sought one,” he standing out as the first evolutionist who 
worked “upon true Baconian principles,” (3) his originality, (4) his good 
fortune in having “lived at a time when the storehouse of facts was fairly 
bursting for want of a generalization” and (5) the effects of “the training 
he got as an observer on the Beagle voyage.” 
Unlike the “Philosophic Zoologique,” “The Origin of Species” was 
1 “From the Greeks to Darwin,” pp. 230-231. 1908. 
