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Updated: June 4, 2025
What am I to think or say? That I tried to deceive others till I have fallen a victim to my own falsehood? Surely this is the most reasonable conclusion to arrive at. Or that I have really found Lamarck's talisman, which had been for some time lost sight of? Will the reader bid me wake with him to a world of chance and blindness?
He shows the fallacy of Lamarck's reasoning, and by anticipation confutes the whole theory of Mr. Darwin, when gathering clearly up into a few heads the recapitulation of the whole argument in favour of the reality of species in nature. That there is a capacity in all species to accommodate themselves to a certain extent to a change of external circumstances.
One is the mutability of Lamarck's primrose, and the second is the immutable condition of quite a number of other species. Among them are some of its near allies, the common and the small flowered evening-primrose, or Oenothera biennis and O. muricata. From these facts, a very important question arises in connection with the theory of descent.
Lamarck's views are expounded chiefly in his Philosophie Zoologique, first published in 1809, and an excellent edition of this work with biographical and critical introduction was published by Charles Martins in 1873.
All the species of animals, therefore, are, in Lamarck's view, the result of the indirect action of changes of circumstance, upon those primitive germs which he considered to have originally arisen, by spontaneous generation, within the waters of the globe.
Lamarck's conjectures, equipped with a new hat and stick, as Sir Walter Scott was wont to say of an old story renovated, formed the foundation of the biological speculations of the 'Vestiges', a work which has done more harm to the progress of sound thought on these matters than any that could be named; and, indeed, I mention it here simply for the purpose of denying that it has anything in common with what essentially characterises Mr.
He has naturally been welcomed by English Charles-Darwinians; for if his view can be sustained, then it can be contended that use and disuse produce no transmissible effect, and the ground is cut from under Lamarck's feet; if, on the other hand, his view is unfounded, the Lamarckian reaction, already strong, will gain still further strength.
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.
Lamarck's evening-primrose is a stately plant, with a stout stem, attaining often a height of 1.6 meters and more. When not crowded the main stem is surrounded by a large circle of smaller branches, growing upwards from its base so as often to form a dense bush. These branches in their turn have numerous lateral branches.
Weismannism, therefore, is the inevitable outcome of the straits to which Charles-Darwinians were reduced through the way in which their leader had halted between two opinions. This is why Charles-Darwinians, from Professor Huxley downwards, have kept the difference between Lamarck's opinions and those of Mr. Darwin so much in the background.
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