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Undoubtedly the theory of descent with modification, which received its first sufficiently ample and undisguised exposition in 1809 with the "Philosophie Zoologique" of Lamarck, shared the common fate of all theories that revolutionise opinion on important matters, and was fiercely opposed by the Huxleys, Romaneses, Grant Allens, and Ray Lankesters of its time.
The most eminent of these writers was a great French naturalist, Lamarck, who published an elaborate work, the Philosophie Zoologique, in which he endeavoured to prove that all animals whatever are descended from other species of animals.
Haeckel points out that if Goethe had known Lamarck's work his genius would have gained for the "Philosophie Zoölogique" the interest and respect of the reading world. But Cuvier laughed it out of court, and only in comparatively modern times, since Darwin's work has set the world thinking anew, is Lamarck's career recognized at its true value.
With respect to the 'Philosophie Zoologique, it is no reproach to Lamarck to say that the discussion of the Species question in that work, whatever might be said for it in 1809, was miserably below the level of the knowledge of half a century later.
And when will this theory, the hardihood of which has been greatly exaggerated, become freed from the interpretations and commentaries by the false light of which so many naturalists have followed their opinion concerning it? In 1873 M. Martin published his edition of Lamarck's Philosophic Zoologique. Professor Huxley in his article on Evolution is no less cavalier than Mr. Wallace.
This was the "Philosophie Zoölogique." In this treatise he taught that the animal kingdom is a unit and that all its members are blood relations; that the members vary with varying conditions; that this variation results in continued advance. In all of these points Lamarck is at one with modern thought.
But now we turn to the other side. In spite of the continued progress noted on the mechanical side, it is true that the predominant scientific interest changed in the nineteenth century from mechanics to biology, from matter to life, from Newton to Darwin. Darwin was born in 1809, the year in which Lamarck, who invented the term biology, published his Philosophie Zoologique.
It is idle to talk of Buffon's work as "a mere plausible and happy guess," or to imply that the first volume of the "Philosophie Zoologique" of Lamarck was a less full and sufficient demonstration of descent with modification than the "Origin of Species" is.
In the year 1801, and subsequently, he published his views, first in smaller essays and afterward more in detail in his "Philosophie Zoologique," which appeared in 1809, and in the first volume of his "Histoire Naturelle des Animaux sans Vertèbres," published in 1815.
I accordingly gathered as much as I could second-hand of what Lamarck had said, reserving a study of his "Philosophie Zoologique" for another occasion, and read as much about ants and bees as I could find in readily accessible works. In a few days I saw my way again; and now, reading the "Origin of Species" more closely, and I may say more sceptically, the antagonism between Mr.
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