RELA TION BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION 



373 



most elevated and inspiring, and we know that in 

 character he was pure and sweet, self-sacrificing, 

 self-denying, and free from self-assertion. 



The quotations from his Pkilosophie zoologique, 

 published in i8og, given below, will show what were 

 the results of his meditations on the relations be- 

 tween science and religion. Had his way of looking 

 at this subject prevailed, how much misunderstand- 

 ing and ill-feeling between theologians and savants 

 would have been avoided ! Had his spirit and 

 breadth of view animated both parties, there would 

 not have been the constant and needless opposition 

 on the part of the Church to the grand results of 

 scientific discovery and philosophy, or too hasty 

 dogmatism and scepticism on the part of some 

 scientists. 



In Lamarck, at the opening of the past century, 

 we behold the spectacle of a man devoting over fifty 

 years of his life to scientific research in biology, and 

 insisting on the doctrine of spontaneous generation; 

 of the immense length of geological time, so opposed 

 to the views held by the Church ; the evolution of 

 plants and animals from a single germ, and even the 

 origin of man from the apes, yet as earnestly claim- 

 ing that nature has its Author who in the beginning 

 estabHshed the order of things, giving the initial 

 impulse to the laws of the universe. 



As Duval says, after quoting the passage given 

 below: " Deux faits son a noter dans ce passage: 

 d'une part, les termes dignes et conciliants dans 

 lesquels Lamarck ^tablit la part de la science et de 

 la religion ; cela vaut, mieux, m^me en tenant compte 



