GENESIS OF MAN. 13 



law of competition among living organisms as a factor in develop- 

 ment ; that principle which Darwin so forcibly expresses by the 

 phrase " struggle for existence." Lamarck does indeed recognize 

 this "struggle" and the influence it exerts in preventing the un- 

 checked multiplication of any one species from rendering the globe 

 uninhabitable to others. But he seems to regard this as a wise 

 precaution and calculated " to preserve all in the established order." 

 In other words, he recognizes it as a statical but not as a dynamical 

 law. He fails to perceive its influence in transforming species. 



It is the full appreciation of this element that constitutes the real 

 strength of Darwinism ; it is the key-stone of the arch of the 

 descent theory, for the discovery and successful illustration of 

 which too great praise cannot be awarded to the English naturalist. 

 But every other important principle embraced in his Origin of Spe- 

 cies was also contained in more or less definite form in the Philo- 

 sophic Zoologique. 



The failure of Lamarck's views to gain the ascendancy so rapidly 

 attained by those of Darwin, was due to a variety of causes. First 

 among these was the general fact that the state of science and pub- 

 lic opinion had not, at his time, sufficiently advanced for the gen- 

 eral reception of that class of ideas ; and any estimate of Lamarck's 

 works which leaves out their silent, leavening influence upon cer- 

 tain classes directly, and thence indirectly upon society at large, 

 is too hastily made and fails to do them justice. Next in impor- 

 tance, in preventing the early spread of Lamarckism, comes the un- 

 fortunate omission, above alluded to, to grasp the great law of bio- 

 logical competion in its dynamic form. As a third influence may 

 be ranked the somewhat direct and undiplomatic method of La- 

 marck, which never consulted the policy of what he wished to say 

 or courted the approval of high authorities. Every truth in his 

 possession was put forward in the most direct and naked manner, re- 

 gardless of the shock it might produce upon a world still groping in 

 the murky atmosphere of teleology. Still a fourth element of weak- 

 ness in the Lamarckian philosophy was the inadequate emphasis 

 which he laid upon the most important of all his principles, that of 

 heredity, and the correspondingly undue importance ascribed to 

 habit, to use and disuse, as a direct agent in the modification of or- 

 gans. The real failure here was to grasp the true connection and 

 cooperation of these two principles. In short he seemed but dimly 



