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Lamarck's theory of evolution, known to all Asiatic races from time immemorial, was the intuitional and absolute knowledge that comes to all men when they reach a certain stage of development.
Wallace has here taken a leaf out of the theologians' book. His statement is one which will not pass muster with those whom public opinion is sure in the end to follow. Did Mr. Herbert Spencer, for example, "repeatedly and easily refute" Lamarck's hypothesis in his brilliant article in the Leader, March 20, 1852?
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.
"Nevertheless," he says, "it is probable that the hearing rather early in life such views maintained and praised may have favoured my upholding them under a different form in my Origin of Species" a remark which refers to Lamarck's views on the general doctrine of evolution, but might also prove equally true if applied to Darwin's partial retention of the Lamarckian explanation of that evolution.
American zoölogists have been especially inclined toward Lamarck's ideas. Until Weissmann startled the scientific world with his sharp denial of the possibility of transmitting to offspring any growth acquired by the parents, all seemed well.
Lamarck's theory of the use and disuse of organs and Darwin's hypothesis of natural selection are consequently pushed into the background. Here also Eimer at once places himself at variance with Naegeli who had enunciated a similar theory.
For many years after the promulgation of Lamarck's doctrine of progressive development, geologists were much occupied with the question whether the past changes in the animate and inanimate world were brought about by sudden and paroxysmal action, or gradually and continuously, by causes differing neither in kind nor degree from those now in operation.
In assigning the lion's share of development to the accumulation of fortunate accidents, he tempted fortuitists to try to cut the ground from under Lamarck's feet by denying that the effects of use and disuse can be inherited at all. When the public had once got to understand what Lamarck had intended, and wherein Mr.
The direct bearing of the ape-like character of the Neanderthal skull on Lamarck's doctrine of progressive development and transmutation, or on that modification of it which has of late been so ably advocated by Mr.
Hilaire had views similar to Lamarck's, but reached them from quite a different standpoint from the observation of the analogy and homology of the organs; and accounted for the variation of species, not by the use or disuse of the organs, but on the one hand by the common original type of the organs, and on the other by the varied influence of the surroundings the monde ambiant.
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