Professor Lankester and Lamarck 231 
commonly believed. During the thirty years that followed 
1831 Lamarck’s opinions made more way than Darwinians 
are willing to allow. Granted that in 1861 the theory was 
generally accepted under the name of Darwin, not under 
that of Lamarck, still it was Lamarck and not Darwin that 
was being accepted; it was descent, not descent with 
modification by means of natural selection from among 
fortuitous variations, that we carried away with us from 
the “‘ Origin of Species.” The thing triumphed whether 
the name was lost or not. I need not waste the reader’s 
time by showing further how little weight he need attach 
to the fact that Lamarckism was not immediately received 
with open arms by an admiring public. The theory of 
descent has become accepted as rapidly, if I am not 
mistaken, as the Copernican theory, or as Newton’s theory 
of gravitation. 
When Professor Ray Lankester goes on to speak of the 
“‘undemonstrable agencies’’ “arbitrarily asserted” to 
exist by Professor Semper, he is again presuming on the 
ignorance of his readers. Professor Semper’s agencies 
are in no way more undemonstrable than Mr. Darwin’s are. 
Mr. Darwin was perfectly cogent as long as he stuck to 
Lamarck’s demonstration ; his arguments were sound as 
long as they were Lamarck’s, or developments of, and 
riders upon, Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck, and 
almost incredibly silly when they were his own. Fortunately 
the greater part of the “ Origin of Species ’’ is devoted to 
proving the theory of descent with modification, by argu- 
ments against which no exception would have been taken 
by Mr. Darwin’s three great precursors, except in so far as 
the variations whose accumulation results in specific 
difference are supposed to be fortuitous—and, to do Mr. 
Darwin justice, the fortuitousness, though always within 
hail, is kept as far as possible in the background. 
“Mr. Darwin’s arguments,” says Professor Ray Lan- 
kester, “rest on the proved existence of minute, many- 
