OPINIONS ON GENERAL PHYSIOLOGY 157 



We know that he was a firm beHever in spontane- 

 ous generation, and that he conceived that it took 

 place not only in the origination of his primeval 

 germs or ^bauches, but at all later periods down to 

 the present day. 



Yet Lamarck accepted Harvey's doctrine, published 

 in 1 65 1, that all living beings arose from germs or 

 eggs* 



He must have known of Spallanzani's experiments, 

 published in 1776, even if he had not read the writ- 

 ings of Treviranus (1802-1805), both of whom had ex- 

 perimentally disproved the theory of the spontaneous 

 generation of animalcules in putrid infusions, show- 

 ing that the lowest organisms develop only from 

 germs. 



The eighteenth century, though one of great in- 

 tellectual activity, was, however, as regards cosmol- 

 ogy» geology, general physiology or biology, a period 

 of groping in the dim twilight, when the whole truth 

 or even a part of it was beyond the reach of the 

 greatest geniuses, and they could only seize on half- 

 truths. Lamarck, both a practical botanist, system- 

 atic zoologist, and synthetic philosopher, had done 

 his best work before the rise of the experimental 

 and inductive methods, when direct observation and 

 experiments had begun to take the place of vague 

 h priori thinking and reasoning, so that he labored 

 under a disadvantage due largely to the age in which 

 he lived. 



* See his remark : ' ' On a dit avcc raison que tout ce qui a vie pro- 

 ■uient d'un oiuf" {M/moires de Physique, etc., I7g7, p. 272). He 

 appears, however, to have made the simplest organisms exceptions to 

 this doctrine. 



