WHEN DID LAMARCK'S VIEWS CH4NGE? 227 



and patronage in early life, frequenting his house, 

 and was for a time the travelling companion of Buf- 

 fon's son: It should seem most natural that he would 

 have been personally influenced by his great prede- 

 cessor, but we see no indubitable trace of such influ- 

 ence in his writings. Lamarckism is not Buffonism. 

 It comprises in the main quite a different, more varied 

 and comprehensive set of factors.* 



Was Lamarck influenced by the biological writings 

 of Halier, Bonnet, or by the philosophic views of Con- 

 dillac, whose Essai sur V Origine des Connaissances 

 humaincs appeared in 1 786 ; or of Condorcet, whom 

 he must personally have known, and whose Esquisse 

 d'un Tableau historique des Progres de r Esprit hu- 

 mainvfSis published in 1794?! In one case only in La- 

 marck's works do we find reference to these thinkers. 



Was Lamarck, as the result of his botanical studies 

 from 1768 to 1793, and being puzzled, as system- 

 atic botanists are, by the variations of the more plastic 

 species of plants, led to deny the fixity of specfes ? 



We have been unable to find any indications of a 

 change of views in his botanical writings, though his 

 papers are prefaced by philosophical reflections. 



It would indeed be interesting to know what led 

 Lamarck to change his views. Without any explana- 



* See the comparative summary of the views of the founders of 

 evolution at the end of Chapter XVII. 



f While Rousseau was living at Montmorency "his thoughts wan- 

 dered confusedly round the notion of a treatise to be called ' Sensitive 

 Morality or the Materialism of the Age,' the object of which was to 

 examine the influence of external agencies, such as light, darkness, 

 sound, seasons, food, noise, silence, motion, rest, on our corporeal 

 machine, and thus, indirectly, upon the soul also." — Rousseau, by 

 John Morley (p. 164). 



