350 



LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



species does not suffer change in the circumstances 

 essential to its mode of life." 



The same views are repeated in the introduction 

 \.o \X\& Animaiix sans Vertibres (1815), and again in 

 1820, in his last work, and do not need to be translated, 

 as they are repetitions of his previously published 

 views in the Philosophie zoologique. 



Unfortunately, to illustrate his thoughts on instinct 

 Lamarck does not give us any examples, nor did he 

 apparently observe to any great extent the habits of 

 animals. In these days one cannot follow him in draw- 

 ing a line — as regards the possession of instincts — 

 between the lowest organisms, or Protozoa, and the 

 groups provided with a nervous system. 



Lamarck's meaning of the word " besoins" or wants 

 or needs. — Lamarck's use of the word wants or needs 

 (besoins) has, we think, been greatly misunderstood 

 and at times caricatured or pronounced as " absurd." 

 The distinguished French naturalist, Quatrefages, 

 although he was not himself an evolutionist, has pro- 

 tested against the way Lamarck's views have been 

 caricatured.' By nearly all authors he is represented 

 as claiming that by simply " willing " or " desiring " 

 the individual bird or other animal radically and with 

 more or less rapidity changed its shape or that of 

 s'ome particular organ or part of the body. This is, 

 as we have seen, by no means what he states. In 

 no instance does he speak of an animal as simply 

 "desiring" to modify an organ in any way. The 

 doctrine of appetency attributed to Lamarck is with- 

 out foundation. In all the examples given he inti- 

 mates that owing to changes in environment, leading 



