V. 



FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE. 



Ainsi, la ?tature, toujours agissante, toujours impassible, renouvelant et vari- 

 ant toute espece de corps, n'en preservant aucun de la destruction, nous offre une 

 scene imposante et sans terme, et nous montre en elle une puissance particuliere 

 qui n'agit que par necessite. — LAMARCK. 



We have now come to an important step in the 

 history of the Evolution theory ; that is, the rela- 

 tion of Erasmus Darwin to Lamarck. We shall see, 

 in treating Lamarck, that the parallelism between 

 the line of reasoning of these two men is very strik- 

 ing. They not only used the same illustrations, but 

 almost the same language ; and by putting together 

 various passages from Darwin's writings, we can re- 

 construct, almost verbatim, the four principles of 

 Lamarck. Darwin's work was published in 1794 

 while as Huxley points out, in his Recherches sur 

 Ics causes des principaux fails physiques, written in 

 I 776, but not published until 1 794, Lamarck adopted 

 Buffon's maturer and more conservative views, as 

 shown in the following sentence : — 



All the individuals of this nature are derived from similar indi- 

 viduals, which altogether constitute the entire species. ... If 

 there exist many varieties produced by the action of environment, 

 these varieties do not degenerate to the point of forming new 

 species. . . . 



It was not until 1801, seven years after the publi- 

 cation of the Zoono7nia, that Lamarck published his 



152 



