414 BIOLOGY AND ITS MAKERS 
protective coloration, etc. His work received some notice 
from scholars. Paley’s Natural Theology, for illustration, 
was written against it, although Paley is careful not to men- 
tion Darwin or his work. The success of Paley’s book is 
probably one of the chief causes for the neglect into which 
the views of Buffon and Erasmus Darwin fell. 
Inasmuch as Darwin's conclusions were published before 
Lamarck’s book, it would be interesting to determine whether 
or not Lamarck was influenced by him. The careful con- 
sideration of this matter leads to the conclusion that Lamarck 
drew his inspiration directly from nature, and that points of 
similarity between his views and those of Erasmus Darwin 
are to be looked upon as an example of parallelism in 
thought. It is altogether likely that Lamarck was wholly un- 
acquainted with Darwin's work, which had been published 
in England. 
Goethe's connection with the rise of evolutionary thought 
is in a measure incidental. In 1790 he published his Meta- 
morphosis of Plants, showing that flowers are modified 
leaves. This doctrine of metamorphosis of parts he presently 
applied to the animal kingdom, and brought forward 
his famous, but erroneous, vertebrate theory of the skull. 
As he meditated on the extent of modifications there arose 
in his mind the conviction that all plants and animals have 
been evolved from the modification of a few parental types. 
Accordingly he should be accorded a place in the history of 
evolutionary thought. 
Opposition to Lamarck’s Views.—Lamarck’s doctrine, 
which was published in definite form in 1809, has been 
already outlined. We may well inquire, Why did not his 
views take hold?, In the first place, they were not accepted 
by Cuvier. Cuvier’s opposition was strong and vigorous, 
and succeeded in causing the theory of Lamarck to be com- 
pletely neglected by the French people. Again, we must 
