70 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



work, which appeared just half a century later, we 

 know of none which we could, in this respect, place 

 by the side of the Philosophie Zoologique. How 

 far it was in advance of its time is perhaps best seen 

 from the circumstance that it was not understood by 

 most men, and for fifty years was not spoken of at 

 all. Cuvier, Lamarck's greatest opponent, in his 

 Report on the Progress of Natural Science, in which 

 the most unimportant anatomical investigations are 

 enumerated, does not devote a single word to this 

 work, which forms an epoch in science. Goethe, also, 

 who took such a lively interest in the French nature- 

 philosophy and in the ' thoughts of kindred minds 

 beyond the Rhine,' nowhere mentions Lamarck, and 

 does not seem to have known the Philosophie Zo- 

 ologique at all." 



, Again in 1882 Haeckel writes : * 



^^ . 



" We regard it as a truly tragic fact that the Phi- 

 losophie Zoologique of Lamarck, one of the greatest 

 productions of the great literary period of the begin- 

 ning of our century, received at first only the slight- 

 est notice, and within a few years became wholly 

 forgotten. . . . Not until fully fifty years later, 

 when Darwin breathed new life into the transforma- 

 tion views founded therein, was the buried treasure 

 again recovered, and we cannot refrain from regarding 

 it as the most complete presentation of the develop- 

 ment theory before Darwin. 



" While Lamarck clearly expressed all the essential 

 fundamental ideas of our present doctrine of descent ; 

 and excites our admiration at the depth of his mor- 

 phological knowledge, he none the less surprises us 

 by the prophetic {vorausschauende) clearness of his 

 physiological conceptions." // 



* Die Naturanschauung von Darwin, Goethe und Lamarck, Jena, 

 1882. 



