LAMARCK'S THEORY OF DESCENT 289 



thus place a great obstacle to the extreme multiplica- 

 tion of the individuals of his species. 



" Indeed, it seems as if man had taken it upon him- 

 self unceasingly to reduce the number of his fellow- 

 creatures ; for never, I do not hesitate to say, will the 

 earth be covered with the population that it could 

 maintain. Several of its habitable parts would always 

 be alternately very sparsely populated, although the 

 time for these alternate changes would be to us 

 measureless. 



" Thus by these wise precautions everything is 

 preserved in the established order; the changes and 

 perpetual renewals which are observable in this order 

 are maintained within limits over which they cannot 

 pass ; the races of living beings all subsist in spite of 

 their variations ; the progress acquired in the improve- 

 ment of the organization is not lost ; everything 

 which appears to be disordered, overturned, anoma- 

 lous, reenters unceasingly into the general order, and 

 even cooperates with it ; and especially and always 

 the will of the sublime Author of nature and of all 

 existing things is invariably executed " (pp. 98-101). 



In the sixth chapter the author treats of the 

 degradation and simplification of the structure from 

 one end to the other of the animal series, proceeding, 

 as he says, inversely to the general order of nature, 

 from the compound to the more simple. Why he 

 thus works out this idea of a general degradation is 

 not very apparent, since it is out of tune with his 

 views, so often elsewhere expressed, of a progressive 

 evolution from the simple to the complex, and to his 

 own classification of the animal kingdom, beginning as 

 it does with the simplest forms and ending with man. 

 Perhaps, however, he temporarily adopts the prevail- 

 ing method of beginning with the highest forms in order 

 19 



