1 6 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



The meditations, the thoughts and aspirations of a 

 contemplative nature Hke his, in his hours of work or 

 leisure, in some degree consoled the budding philoso- 

 pher during this period of uncongenial labor, and 

 when he did have an opportunity of communicating 

 his ideas to his friends, of discussing them, of defend- 

 ing them against objection, the hardships of his work- 

 aday life were for the time forgotten. In his ardor 

 for science all the uncongenial experiences of his life 

 as a bank clerk vanished. Like many another ris- 

 ing genius in art, literature, or science, his zeal for 

 knowledge and investigation in those days of grinding 

 poverty fed the fires of his genius, and this was the 

 light which throughout his long poverty-stricken life 

 shed a golden lustre on his toilsome existence. He 

 did not then know that the great Linnd, the father of 

 the science he was to illuminate and so greatly to ex- 

 pand, also began life in extreme poverty, and eked out 

 his scanty livelihood by mending over again for his own 

 use the cast-off shoes of his fellow-students. (Cuvier.) 



Bourguin * tells us that Lamarck's 'medical course 

 lasted four years, and this period of severe study — 

 for he must have made it such — evidently laid the 

 best possible foundation that Paris could then afford 

 for his after studies. He seems, however, to have 

 wavered in his intentions of making medicine his 

 life work, for he possessed a decided taste for music. 

 His eldest brother, the Chevalier de Bazentin, strongly 

 opposed, and induced him to abandon this project, 

 though not without difficulty. 



* Les Grand Naturalists Franfais au Commencement du XIX 

 Sihle. 



