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Updated: April 30, 2025
Among these may be mentioned many Hippurites, Sphaerulites, and other members of that great family of mollusca called Rudistes by Lamarck, to which nothing analogous has been discovered in the living creation, but which is quite characteristic of rocks of the Cretaceous era in the south of France, Spain, Sicily, Greece, and other countries bordering the Mediterranean.
But one cannot suppose that Lamarck ever doubted this; for he can never have meant to say, that a low form of life made itself into an elephant at one or two great bounds; and if he did not mean this, he must have meant that it made itself into an elephant through the accumulation of small successive modifications; these, he must have seen, were capable of accumulation in the scheme of nature, though he may not have dwelt on the manner in which this is accomplished, inasmuch as it is obviously a matter of secondary importance in comparison with the origin of the variations themselves.
Whenever he attempts this he reminds us of Lamarck, and shows us how little light the science of a century devoted to structural investigation has thrown upon the mystery of organization. Here purely natural explanations fail.
While the names of Darwin and Goethe, and in particular that of Lamarck, must always stand out in high relief in this generation as the exponents of the idea of transmutation of species, there are a few others which must not be altogether overlooked in this connection.
Had I not preluded with the apparently idle story of my revival of the controversial methods of Elijah, I should be asked how it was that the explorer who opened up this gulf of despair, far from being stoned or crucified as the destroyer of the honor of the race and the purpose of the world, was hailed as Deliverer, Savior, Prophet, Redeemer, Enlightener, Rescuer, Hope Giver, and Epoch Maker; whilst poor Lamarck was swept aside as a crude and exploded guesser hardly worthy to be named as his erroneous forerunner.
He even lost all respect for Walter Scott on account of the oversights in his Quentin Durward. The murder of the Archbishop of Liège is anticipated by fifteen years. The wife of Robert de Lamarck was Jeanne d'Arschel and not Hameline de Croy.
Granted that in 1861 the theory was generally accepted under the name of Darwin, not under that of Lamarck, still it was Lamarck and not Darwin that was being accepted; it was descent, not descent with modification by means of natural selection from among fortuitous variations, that we carried away with us from the "Origin of Species." The thing triumphed whether the name was lost or not.
And just as they were reaching the summit where the basilica reared its forest of scaffoldings beneath the clear sky, they encountered Thomas, who, on leaving the factory, had gone to give an order to a founder in the Rue Lamarck. He, who as a rule was so silent and discreet, now happened to be in an expansive mood, which made him look quite radiant. "Ah!
So we come to the only one of the present forms of evolution which remains for us to mention, viz., neo-Lamarckism. It is well known that Lamarck attributed to the living being the power of varying by use or disuse of its organs, and also of passing on the variation so acquired to its descendants. A certain number of biologists hold a doctrine of this kind to-day.
The former was simply the creative hypothesis with the creator left out; the latter had already been propounded by De Maillet and Erasmus Darwin, among others; and, later, systematically expounded by Lamarck. Darwin's opinion of the scientific value of the "Zoonomia" has already been mentioned.
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