374 



LAMARCK, HIS LIFE AND WORK 



des differences d'epoques, que les abjurations de 

 Buff on. " * 



The passage quoted by M. Duval is the following 

 one: 



" Surely nothing exists except by the will of the 

 Sublime Author of all things. But can we not assign 

 him laws in the execution of his will, and determine 

 the method which he has followed in this respect ? 

 Has not his infinite power enabled him to create an 

 order of things which has successively given exist- 

 ence to all that we see, as well as to that which ex- 

 ists and that of which we have no knowledge ? As 

 regards the decrees of this infinite wisdom, I have 

 confined myself to the limits of a simple observer of 

 nature." f 



In other places we find the following expressions: 



" There is then, for the animals as for the plants, 

 an order which belongs to nature, and which results, 

 as also the objects which this order makes exist, 

 from the power which it has received from the 

 Supreme Author of all things. She is herself 

 only the general and unchangeable order that this 

 Sublime Author has created throughout, and only 

 the totality of the general and special laws to which 

 this order is subject. By these means, whose use it 

 continues without change, it has given and will per- 

 petually give existence to its productions; it varies 

 and renews them unceasingly, and thus everywhere 

 preserves the whole order which is the result of it." :{; 



" To regard nature as eternal, and consequently 



* Mathias Duval : " Le transformiste fran9ais Lamarck,'' Bulletin 

 de la SocUie d^ Anthropologic de Pay-is, xii., l88g, p. 345. 

 f Philosophie zoologique, p. 56. 

 i Loc. cit., i., p. 113. 



