26o LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



appeal to pronounce on this great subject when you 

 have sufficiently examined and followed all the facts 

 which relate to it. 



" If among living bodies there are any the con- 

 sideration of whose organization and of the phe- 

 nomena which they produce can enlighten us as to 

 the power of nature and its course relatively to the 

 existence of these bodies, also as to the variations 

 which they undergo, we certainly have to seek for 

 them in the lowest classes of the two organic king- 

 doms (the animals and the plants). It is in the classes 

 which comprise the living bodies whose organization 

 is the least complex that we can observe and bring to- 

 gether facts the most luminous, observations the most 

 decisive on the origin of these bodies, on their repro- 

 duction and their admirable diversification, finally on 

 the formation and the development of their different 

 organs, the whole process being aided by the concur- 

 rence of generations, of time, and of circumstances. 



" It is, indeed, among living bodies the most multi- 

 plied, the most numerous in nature, the most prompt 

 and easy to regenerate themselves, that we should 

 seek the most instructive facts bearing on the course 

 of nature and on the means she has employed to 

 create her innumerable productions. In this case we 

 perceive that, relatively to the animal kingdom, we 

 should chiefly give our attention to the invertebrate 

 animals, because their enormous multiplicity in nature, 

 the singular diversity of their Systems of organization 

 and of their means of multiplication, their increasing 

 simplification, and the extreme f ugacity of those which 

 compose the lowest orders of these animals, show us 

 much better than the others the true course of nature, 

 and the means which she has used and which she is 

 -Still incessantly employing to give existence to all the 

 living bodies of which we have knowledge. 



" Her course and her means are without doubt the 

 same for the production of the different plants which 



