240 LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



" 5. That each organization and each form acquired 

 by this course of things and by the circumstances 

 which there have concurred, were preserved and trans- 

 mitted successively by generation [heredity] until new 

 modifications of . these organizations and of these 

 forms have been ac^ aired by the same means and by 

 new circumstances ; 



" 6. Finally, that from the uninterrupted concur- 

 rence of these causes or from these laws of nature, 

 together with much time and with an almost incon- 

 ceivable diversity of influential circumstances, or- 

 ganic beings of all the orders have been successively 

 formed. 



" Considerations so extraordinary, relatively to the 

 ideas that the vulgar have generally formed on the 

 nature and origin of living bodies, will be naturally 

 regarded by you as stretches of the imagination 

 unless I hasten to lay before you some observations 

 and facts which supply the most complete evidence. 



" From the point of view of knowledge based on 

 observation the philosophic naturalist feels convinced 

 that it is in that which is called the lowest classes of 

 the two organic kingdoms — i.e., in those which com- 

 prise the most simply organized beings — that we can 

 collect facts the most luminous and observations the 

 most decisive on \h& production and the reproduction 

 of the living beings in question ; on the causes of the 

 formation of the organs of these wonderful beings ; 

 and on those of their developments, of their diversity 

 and their multiplicity, which increase with the con- 

 course of generations, of times, and of influential 

 circumstances. 



" Hence we may be assured that it is only among 

 the singular beings of these lowest classes, and espe- 

 cially in the lowest orders of these classes, that it is 

 possible to find on both sides the primitive germs of 

 life, and consequently the germs of the most impor- 

 tant faculties of animality and vegetality." 



