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Updated: May 4, 2025
"When will the time come when we may see Lamarck's theory discussed, and I may as well at once say refuted, in some important points, with at any rate the respect due to one of the most illustrious masters of our science?
It was an interesting coincidence that Treviranus should have published the first volume of his Biologie, oder Philosophie der lebenden Natur, in which his views on the transmutation of species were expounded, in 1802, the same twelvemonth in which Lamarck's first exposition of the same doctrine appeared in his Recherches sur l'Organisation des Corps Vivants.
Manifestly they have not struck out useful new characters that would enable their bearers to found new elementary species. At least none have been observed. But poor types might have been produced, and periods of mutability might have been gone through similar to that which is now under observation for Lamarck's evening primrose in Holland.
Since Lamarck's time, almost all competent naturalists have left speculations on the origin of species to such dreamers as the author of the 'Vestiges', by whose well-intentioned efforts the Lamarckian theory received its final condemnation in the minds of all sound thinkers.
It will account equally well for what is called degradation, or a retrograde movement towards a simpler structure, and does not require Lamarck's continual creation of monads; for this was a necessary part of his system, in order to explain how, after the progressive power had been at work for myriads of ages, there were as many beings of the simplest structure in existence as ever. Mr.
If, however, Mr. Wallace still thinks it safe to presume so far on the ignorance of his readers as to say that the only two important works on evolution before Mr. Darwin's were Lamarck's Philosophie Zoologique and the "Vestiges of Creation," how fathomable is the ignorance of the average reviewer likely to have been thirty years ago, when the "Origin of Species" was first published? Mr.
"Lastly, you refer repeatedly to my view as a modification of Lamarck's doctrine of development and progression. If this is your deliberate opinion there is nothing to be said, but it does not seem so to me.
When Professor Ray Lankester puts his finger on Lamarck's weak places, then, but not till then, may he complain of those who try to replace Mr. Darwin's doctrine by Lamarck's. Professor Ray Lankester concludes his note thus: "That such an attempt should be made is an illustration of a curious weakness of humanity.
If the giraffe can develop his neck by wanting and trying, a man can develop his character in the same way. The old saying, 'Where there is a will, there is a way, condenses Lamarck's theory of functional adaptation into a proverb. This felt bracingly moral to strong minds, and reassuringly pious to feeble ones.
To any biologist whose studies had carried him beyond mere species-mongering in 1850, one-half of Lamarck's arguments were obsolete and the other half erroneous, or defective, in virtue of omitting to deal with the various classes of evidence which had been brought to light since his time.
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