POSITION IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE 69 



" Lamarck, thy abandonment, sad as it was in thy 

 old age, is better than the ephemeral glory of men 

 who only maintain their reputation by sharing in the 

 errors of their time. 



" Honor to thee ! Respect to thy memory ! Thou 

 hast died in the breach while fighting for truth, and 

 the truth assures thee immortality." 



Lamarck's theoretical views were not known in 

 Germany until many years after his death. Had 

 Goethe, his contemporary (1749-183 2), known of 

 them, he would undoubtedly have welcomed his 

 speculations, have expressed his appreciation of 

 them, and Lamarck's reputation would, in his own 

 lifetime, have raised him from the obscurity of his 

 later years at Paris. 



Hearty appreciation, though late in the century, 

 came from Ernst Haeckel, whose bold and suggestive 

 works have been so widely read. In his History of 

 Creation (1868) he thus estimates Lamarck's work 

 as a philosopher : . 



^ " To him will always belong the immortal glory of 

 having for the first time worked out the theory of 

 descent, as an independent scientific theory of the 

 first order, and as the philosophical foundation of 

 the whole science of biology." 



Referring to the Philosophic Zoologique, he says : 



^ " This admirable work is the first connected ex- 

 position of the theory of descent carried out strictly 

 into all its consequences. By its purely mechanical 

 method of viewing organic nature, and the strictly 

 philosophical proofs brought forward in it, Lamarck's 

 work is raised far above the prevailing dualistic views 

 of his time ; and with the exception of Darwin's 



