xxii INTRODUCTION 



On his death, no permanent grave was provided for him. 

 His remains were carried to the cemetery of Montparnasse ; 

 but for some reason no burial lot was obtained. His body 

 was placed in a trench, cleared out once every five years 

 for the reception of new bodies. No monument marked the 

 site : but an unknown hand wrote on the margin of the 

 register : " To the left of M. Dassas." The position of the 

 trench is thus known, but Lamarck's bones have probably 

 long since been removed, and their identity irretrievably 

 lost among vast quantities of others thrown together in 

 the Catacombs of Paris. 



§ 2. The Philosophie Zoologique. 



Few names have been so extensively quoted in modern 

 biological controversies as that of Lamarck ; yet of those 

 who quote him scarcely any have taken the trouble to read 

 his work. His name has come to be associated almost 

 I exclusively with the doctrine of the inheritance of acquired 

 ' characters : the modern upholders of that doctrine are 

 commonly referred to as neo-Lamarckians, and among those 

 there are some who look up to Lamarck as the greatest 

 biological teacher that has ever lived. Partly on these 

 grounds, and partly on the grounds of the great historical 

 interest attaching to the work, it has been held desirable to 

 publish a complete English translation of his famous 

 philosophical treatise. For it is to be observed that the 

 Zoological Philosophy, from the purely historical stand- 

 point, represents the most advanced philosophical position 

 taken up by men of science in the pre-Darwinian era. We 

 most of us in these days do not beheve in the inheritance of 

 acquired characters ; but we all of us beheve in evolution. 

 The Zoological Philosophy was published exactly half a 

 century before the Origin of Species : and by far its most 

 outstanding feature is its defence of the theory of the muta- 

 bility of species against the theory of special creations for 

 each species, then almost universally current. That inherit- 



