LAMARCK. 163 



search for secondary causes, as opposed to arrest 

 with supernatural causation. He believes that we 

 see in Nature a certain order originally imposed by 

 its Author, which is manifested in the successive de- 

 velopment of life; we thus study natural forces and 

 Nature abandoned to its laws. In this sense we 

 see Nature creating and developing without cessa- 

 tion towards higher and higher types. Mxternal 

 conditions do not alter this order of development, 

 but give it infinite variety by directing the scale of 

 being into an infinite number of branches. Lamarck 

 denied, absolutely, the existence of any 'perfecting 

 tendency ' in Nature, and regarded Evolution as the 

 final necessary effect of surrounding conditions on 

 life. Thus, in his Teleology, he adopted the mod- 

 ern standpoint. Instead of suggesting that animals 

 had been created for a certain mode of life, he suj)- 

 posed that their mode of life had itself created them. 

 Wings were not given to birds to enable them to 

 fly, but they had developed wings in attempting to 



fly. 



In his discussion of Evolution in general, in the 

 section, ' De FOrdre naturel dcs Aniniaux,' he 

 says : — 



" In considering the natural order of animals, the very positive 

 gradation which exists in their structure, organization, and in the 

 number as well as in the perfection of their faculties, is very far 

 removed from being a new truth, because the Greeks tlK-msclves 

 fully perceived it ; but they were unable to expose the princij^les 

 and the proofs of this evolution, because they lacked the knowl- 



