Aspalax and Proteus." In another letter he describes his work on evolution to Hooker, and adds, "Heaven forefend me from Lamarck nonsense of a 'tendency to progression,' 'adaptations from the slow willing of animals,' etc!"
There is, of course, the possibility that by reading Lamarck, and noting his obvious errors, Darwin was stimulated to seek more facts, and better bases for interpreting them. When he first read the Zoonomia, the principal evolutionary work of his grandfather, he was not greatly impressed. Yet in his later judgment of this book, he says, "Nevertheless, it is probable that the hearing, rather early in life[1], such views maintained and praised, may have favored my upholding them in a different form in my Origin of Species.” It would not be hard to include Lamarck with Erasmus Darwin in this acknowledgment.
It is plain, therefore, that Darwin was acquainted with the general conception of the evolution of life some years before he went upon the Beagle as naturalist. That he did not consider the idea as either probable or even suggestive of truth is shown by his own statement that, while on the voyage, he accepted the Bible literally, and along with it, the theory of special creation. But the reading of Lyell's Principles of Geology—in which Lamarck's—hypotheses are quite fully explained—and the study of similarities between living and fossil forms in South America combined to bring about uncertainty, and in the end, a complete
- ↑ Darwin was eighteen when he learned of Lamarck, and even younger when he read Zoonomia.
