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Updated: May 4, 2025
Darwin than they may be with him, if they think it worth while, for "actually defending" the exploded notion of natural selection for assuredly the Charles-Darwinian system is now more exploded than Lamarck's is. What Professor Ray Lankester says about Lamarck and "directly transforming agents" will mislead those who take his statement without examination.
Darwin's words "seem" to say that it really could not be worth any practical naturalist's while to devote attention to Lamarck's argument; the inquiry might be of interest to antiquaries, but Mr. Darwin had more important work in hand than following the vagaries of one who had been so completely exploded as Lamarck had been.
The first three volumes of Treviranus's "Biologie," which contain his general views of evolution, appeared between 1802 and 1805. The "Recherches sur l'organisation des corps vivants," in which the outlines of Lamarck's doctrines are given, was published in 1802, but the full development of his views, in the "Philosophie Zoologique," did not take place until 1809.
Now, guessing in science is a very hazardous proceeding, and Lamarck's reputation has suffered woefully for the absurdities into which his baseless suppositions led him.
He speaks of having "advocated a law of continuity even in the organic world, so far as possible without adopting Lamarck's theory of transmutation"...
Lamarck's theories fell into disrepute, partly because they were too startling to be capable of ready fusion with existing ideas; they were, in fact, too wide a cross for fertility; partly because they fell upon evil times, during the reaction that followed the French Revolution; partly because, unless I am mistaken, he did not sufficiently link on the experience of the race to that of the individual, nor perceive the importance of the principle that consciousness, memory, volition, intelligence, &c., vanish, or become latent, on becoming intense.
"The first course of lectures on zoology I attended was given in Lausanne in 1823. It consisted chiefly of extracts from Cuvier's 'Regne Animal, and from Lamarck's 'Animaux sans Vertebres. I now became aware, for the first time, that the learned differ in their classifications.
The displacement of Lamarck's theory by Darwin's shows that the effects of use-inheritance often differ from those required by natural selection; and it is clear that the latter factor must at least have reduced use-inheritance to the very minor position of comparative feebleness and harmlessness assigned to it by Darwin.
To mention Lamarck's name in the presence of the conventional English society naturalist has always been like shaking a red rag at a cow; he is at once infuriated; "as if it were possible," to quote from Isidore Geoffroy St.
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