1 68 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



Lamarck's time. The chief starting point of the 

 doctrine was due to Haller, and, as Verworn states, 

 it is a doctrine which has confused all physiology down 

 to the middle of the present century, and even now 

 emerges again here and there in varied form* 



Lamarck was not a vitaHst. Life, he says,f is usually 

 supposed to be a particular being or entity ; a sort of 

 principle whose nature is unknown, and which possesses 

 living bodies. This notion he denies as absurd, saying 

 that life is a very natural phenomenon, a physical fact ; 

 in truth a little compHcated in its principles, but not in 

 any sense a particular or special being or entity. 



He then defines life in the following words : " Life 

 is an order and a state of things in the parts of every 

 body possessing it, which permits or renders possible 

 in it the execution of organic movement, and which, 

 so long as it exists, is effectively opposed to death. 

 Derange this order and this state of things to the point 

 of preventing the execution of organic movement, or 

 the possibility of its reestablishment, then you cause 

 death." Afterwards, in the Philosophie zoologique, he 

 modifies this definition, which reads thus : " Life, in 

 the parts of a body which possesses it, is an order and 

 a state of things which permit organic movements ; 



* General Physiology (English trans., iSgg, p. 17). In France 

 vitalism was founded by Bordeu (1722-1766), developed further by 

 Barthez (1734-1806) and Chaussier (1746-1828), and formulated most 

 distinctly by Louis Dumas (1765-1813). Later vitalists gave it a thor- 

 oughly mystical aspect, distinguishing several varieties, such as the 

 nisus formativus or formative effort, to explain the forms of organisms, 

 accounting for the fact that from the egg of a bird, a bird and no other 

 species always develops (/. c, p. 18). 



\ Recherches sur l' organisation des corps mvans (1S02), p. 70. The 

 same view was expressed in M^moires tie physique (1797), pp. 254- 

 257, 386. 



