from a single pair. Jean Baptiste René Robinet[1] followed out much the same line of thought as De Maillet, but less soberly; and Bonnet’s speculations in the Palingénésie, which appeared in 1769, have already been mentioned. Buffon (1753–1778), at first a partisan of the absolute immutability of species, subsequently appears to have believed that larger or smaller groups of species have been produced by the modification of a primitive stock; but he contributed nothing to the general doctrine of evolution.
Erasmus Darwin (Zoonomia, 1794), though a zealous evolutionist, can hardly be said to have made any real advance on his predecessors; and, notwithstanding the fact that Goethe had the advantage of a wide knowledge of morphological facts, and a true insight into their signification, while he threw all the power of a great poet into the expression of his conceptions, it may be questioned whether he supplied the doctrine of evolution with a firmer scientific basis than it already possessed. Moreover, whatever the value of Goethe’s labours in that field, they were not published before 1820, long after evolutionism had taken a new departure from the works of Treviranus and Lamarck—the first of its advocates who were equipped for their task with the needful large and accurate knowledge of the phenomena of life as a whole. It is remarkable that each of these writers seems to have been led, independently and contemporaneously, to invent the same name of “biology” for the science of the phenomena of life; and thus, following Buffon, to have recognized the essential unity of these phenomena, and their contradistinction from those of inanimate nature. And it is hard to say whether Lamarck or Treviranus has the priority in propounding the main thesis of the doctrine of evolution; for though the first volume of Treviranus’s Biologie appeared only in 1802, he says, in the preface to his later work, the Erscheinungen und Gesetze des organischen Lebens, dated 1831, that he wrote the first volume of the Biologie “nearly five-and-thirty years ago,” or about 1796.
Now, in 1794, there is evidence that Lamarck held doctrines which present a striking contrast to those which are to be found in the Philosophie zoologique, as the following passages show:—
“685. Quoique mon unique objet dans cet article n’ait été que de traiter de la cause physique de l’entretien de la vie des êtres organiques, malgré cela j’ai osé avancer en débutant, que l’existence de ces êtres étonnants n’appartiennent nullement à la nature; que tout ce qu’on peut entendre par le mot nature, ne pouvoit donner la vie, c’est-à-dire, que toutes les qualités de la matière, jointes à toutes les circonstances possibles, et même à l’activité répandue dans l’univers, ne pouvaient point produire un être muni du mouvement organique, capable de reproduire son semblable, et sujet à la mort.
“686. Tous les individus de cette nature, qui existent, proviennent d’individus semblables qui tous ensemble constituent l’espèce entière. Or, je crois qu’il est aussi impossible à l’homme de connoître la cause physique du premier individu de chaque espèce, que d’assigner aussi physiquement la cause de l’existence de la matière ou de l’univers entier. C’est au moins ce que le résultat de mes connaissances et de mes réflexions me portent à penser. S’il existe beaucoup de variétés produites par l’effet des circonstances, ces variétés ne dénaturent point les espèces; mais on se trompe, sans doute souvent, en indiquant comme espèce, ce qui n’est que variété; et alors je sens que cette erreur peut tirer à conséquence dans les raisonnements que l’on fait sur cette matière.”[2]
The first three volumes of Treviranus’s Biologie, which contains his general views of evolution, appeared between 1802 and 1805. The Recherches sur l’organisation des corps vivants, which sketches out Lamarck’s doctrines, was published in 1802; but the full development of his views in the Philosophie zoologique did not take place until 1809.
The Biologie and the Philosophie zoologique are both very remarkable productions, and are still worthy of attentive study, but they fell upon evil times. The vast authority of Cuvier was employed in support of the traditionally respectable hypotheses of special creation and of catastrophism; and the wild speculations of the Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe were held to be models of sound scientific thinking, while the really much more sober and philosophical hypotheses of the Hydrogéologie were scouted. For many years it was the fashion to speak of Lamarck with ridicule, while Treviranus was altogether ignored.
Nevertheless, the work had been done. The conception of
evolution was henceforward irrespressible, and it incessantly
reappears, in one shape or another,[3] up to the year 1858, when
Charles Darwin and A. R. Wallace published their Theory of
Natural Selection. The Origin of Species appeared in 1859;
and thenceforward the doctrine of evolution assumed a position
and acquired an importance which it never before possessed. In
the Origin of Species, and in his other numerous and important
contributions to the solution of the problem of biological
evolution, Darwin confined himself to the discussion of the
causes which have brought about the present condition of living
matter, assuming such matter to have once come into existence.
On the other hand, Spencer[4] and E. Haeckel[5] dealt with
the whole problem of evolution. The profound and vigorous
writings of Spencer embody the spirit of Descartes in the knowledge
of our own day, and may be regarded as the Principes
de la philosophie of the 19th century; while, whatever hesitation
may not unfrequently be felt by less daring minds in
following Haeckel in many of his speculations, his attempt
to systematize the doctrine of evolution and to exhibit its
influence as the central thought of modern biology, cannot fail
to have a far-reaching influence on the progress of science.
If we seek for the reason of the difference between the scientific
position of the doctrine of evolution in the days of Lamarck
and that which it occupies now, we shall find it in the great
accumulation of facts, the several classes of which have been
enumerated above, under the second to the eighth heads. For
those which are grouped under the second to the seventh of these
classes, respectively, have a clear significance on the hypothesis
of evolution, while they are unintelligible if that hypothesis
be denied. And those of the eighth group are not only uninintelligible
without the assumption of evolution, but can be
proved never to be discordant with that hypothesis, while, in
some cases, they are exactly such as the hypothesis requires.
The demonstration of these assertions would require a volume,
but the general nature of the evidence on which they rest may be
briefly indicated.
2. The accurate investigation of the lowest forms of animal life, commenced by Leeuwenhoek and Swammerdam, and continued by the remarkable labours of Réaumur, Abraham Trembley, Bonnet, and a host of other observers in the latter part of the 17th and the first half of the 18th centuries, drew the attention of biologists to the gradation in the complexity of organization which is presented by living beings, and culminated in the doctrine of the échelle des êtres, so powerfully and clearly stated by Bonnet, and, before him, adumbrated by Locke and by Leibnitz. In the then state of knowledge, it appeared that all the species of animals and plants could be arranged in one series, in such a manner that, by insensible gradations, the mineral passed into the plant, the plant into the polype, the polype into the worm, and so, through gradually higher forms of life, to man, at the summit of the animated world.
But, as knowledge advanced, this conception ceased to be tenable in the crude form in which it was first put forward. Taking into account existing animals and plants alone, it became obvious that they fell into groups which were more or less sharply separated from one another; and, moreover, that even
- ↑ Considérations philosophiques sur la gradation naturelle des formes de l’être; ou les essais de la nature qui apprend à faire l’homme (1768).
- ↑ Recherches sur les causes des principaux faits physiques, par J. B. Lamarck. Paris. Seconde année de la République. In the preface, Lamarck says that the work was written in 1776, and presented to the Academy in 1780; but it was not published before 1794, and at that time it presumably expressed Lamarck’s mature views. It would be interesting to know what brought about the change of opinion manifested in the Recherches sur l’organisation des corps vivants, published only seven years later.
- ↑ See the “Historical Sketch” prefixed to the last edition of the Origin of Species.
- ↑ First Principles and Principles of Biology (1860–1864).
- ↑ Generelle Morphologie (1866).
