1 6 GENESIS OF MAN. 



predominant exercise of any organ, or through that of a constant 

 failure to exercise any part, it preserves through inheritance {gene- 

 ration) in the new individuals that proceed from them, provided 

 the changes acquired be common to both sexes, or to those which 

 have produced these new individuals." 6 



Whatever may be lacking in these two laws, there is certainly 

 contained in them a clear expression of the two prime factors of 

 the theory of descent : viz., heredity and variation ; or, as Darwin 

 frequently expresses it, " descent with modification." The elements 

 of availability alone are wanting ; those working principles by 

 which the theory was to be erected into a perfect system and its 

 machinery set into running order. 



A grand stride had been made, the doctrine of fixity of species 

 had received a fatal thrust, the special creation hypothesis was un- 

 dermined, teleology thenceforth was in organic nature doomed. 



A fifth and last element of weakness in the Lamarckian philoso- 

 phy may be enumerated, one which Haeckel justly sets down to 

 the greater credit of the illustrious author as indicating how far he 

 had outstripped the intellectual progress of his age, so that it was 

 practically impossible that his views should have been accepted in 

 his own day. This consisted in the acceptance and express enun- 

 ciation of two doctrines which are still to-day deeply involved in 

 controversy, even among the most advanced scientific men of our 

 times ; that of spontaneous generation and that of the simian ances- 

 try of the human race, embracing in the latter the extreme theory 

 of the development of the mind pari passu with that of the nervous 

 system and the brain, and carrying it out to the logical consequence 

 of denying the freedom of the will, in the current sense of the 

 phrase. These were clearly, in Lamarck's day, shocking and atro- 

 cious doctrines, and it is doubtless to these chiefly that is to be 

 attributed the neglect of his great contemporary, Cuvier, to give 

 the PJiilosophie Zoologique as much as a passing notice in his report 

 on the progress of natural science ; as well as the rebuke of his 

 philosophical views which he saw fit to introduce into his " eloge " (?) 

 of the great scientific labors of Lamarck. He little dreamed that 

 when these utterances should have been forgotten, and the works 

 of Cuvier consigned to the musty shelves of antiquarian libraries, 

 the humble effort which he had first disdained to notice and after- 



6 Loc. cit. 



