Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution | Page 8

one of the faculty, after consultation with the
Father Superior, kindly gave us in writing the following information as
to the exact date: "The registers of the great seminary were carried
away during the French Revolution, and we do not know whither they
have been transported, and whether they still exist to-day. Besides, it is
very doubtful whether Lamarck resided here, because only ecclesiastics
preparing for receiving orders were received in the seminary. Do you
not confound the seminary with the ancient college of Rue Poste de
Paris, college now destroyed?"
[9] We are following the Éloge of Cuvier almost verbatim, also
reproduced in the biographical notice in the Revue biographique de la
Société Malacologique de France, said to have been prepared by J. R.
Bourguignat.
CHAPTER II

STUDENT LIFE AND BOTANICAL CAREER
The profession of arms had not led Lamarck to forget the principles of
physical science which he had received at college. During his sojourn
at Monaco the singular vegetation of that rocky country had attracted
his attention, and Chomel's Traité des Plantes usuelles accidentally
falling into his hands had given him some smattering of botany.
Lodged at Paris, as he has himself said, in a room much higher up than
he could have wished, the clouds, almost the only objects to be seen
from his windows, interested him by their ever-changing shapes, and
inspired in him his first ideas of meteorology. There were not wanting
other objects to excite interest in a mind which had always been
remarkably active and original. He then realized, to quote from his
biographer, Cuvier, what Voltaire said of Condorcet, that solid
enduring discoveries can shed a lustre quite different from that of a
commander of a company of infantry. He resolved to study some
profession. This last resolution was but little less courageous than the
first. Reduced to a pension (pension alimentaire) of only 400 francs a
year, he attempted to study medicine, and while waiting until he had
the time to give to the necessary studies, he worked in the dreary office
of a bank.
The meditations, the thoughts and aspirations of a contemplative nature
like his, in his hours of work or leisure, in some degree consoled the
budding philosopher during this period of uncongenial labor, and when
he did have an opportunity of communicating his ideas to his friends,
of discussing them, of defending them against objection, the hardships
of his workaday life were for the time forgotten. In his ardor for science
all the uncongenial experiences of his life as a bank clerk vanished.
Like many another rising genius in art, literature, or science, his zeal
for knowledge and investigation in those days of grinding poverty fed
the fires of his genius, and this was the light which throughout his long
poverty-stricken life shed a golden lustre on his toilsome existence. He
did not then know that the great Linné, the father of the science he was
to illuminate and so greatly to expand, also began life in extreme
poverty, and eked out his scanty livelihood by mending over again for

his own use the cast-off shoes of his fellow-students. (Cuvier.)
Bourguin[10] tells us that Lamarck's medical course lasted four years,
and this period of severe study--for he must have made it
such--evidently laid the best possible foundation that Paris could then
afford for his after studies. He seems, however, to have wavered in his
intentions of making medicine his life work, for he possessed a decided
taste for music. His eldest brother, the Chevalier de Bazentin, strongly
opposed, and induced him to abandon this project, though not without
difficulty.
At about this time the two brothers lived in a quiet village[11] near
Paris, and there for a year they studied together science and history.
And now happened an event which proved to be the turning point, or
rather gave a new and lasting impetus to Lamarck's career and decided
his vocation in life. In one of their walks they met the philosopher and
sentimentalist, Jean Jacques Rousseau. We know little about Lamarck's
acquaintance with this genius, for all the details of his life, both in his
early and later years, are pitifully scanty. Lamarck, however, had
attended at the Jardin du Roi a botanical course, and now, having by
good fortune met Rousseau, he probably improved the acquaintance,
and, found by Rousseau to be a congenial spirit, he was soon invited to
accompany him in his herborizations.
Still more recently Professor Giard[12] has unearthed from the works
of Rousseau the following statement by him regarding species: "Est-ce
qu'à proprement parler il n'existerait point d'espèces dans la nature,
mais seulement des individus?"[13] In his Discours sur l'Inégalité
parmi les Hommes is the following passage, which shows, as Giard
says, that Rousseau perfectly understood the influence of the milieu and