The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality | Page 9

diametrically opposed those of Lamarck, predominated over all the investigations of natural science; Buffon, who favored the ideas of Lamarck, and loved to trace a unity in natural phenomena, was too instable in his investigations and views to arrive at a comprehensive principle; and even the eminent naturalist, Cuvier, of Montpellier, showed in his observation of nature a predilection for analysis rather than synthesis, and although his comprehensive mind inclined to generalize and explain, he placed himself in decided opposition to a theory which was founded only on a few decisive facts.
This last mentioned deficiency seems to have been {32} the main cause of Lamarck's views soon being lost sight of. They nowhere found a support in facts; the force of habit played in them an exaggerated and unnatural r?le; the different illustrations of them--such as the long neck of the giraffe explained by the permanent and inherited habit of browsing on the branches of high trees, or the web on the toes of frogs, swimming-birds, etc., explained by the habit of swimming--were talked about and laughed at more as curiosities than as worthy of serious consideration.
Only twice after this did the question put by Lamarck attract wider attention from the learned world. The first time was when, in 1830, the bitter contest arose at the Academy of Paris, between Cuvier and Etienne Geoffrey St. Hilaire, the father of Isidor G. St. Hilaire. Geoffrey St. Hilaire had views similar to Lamarck's, but reached them from quite a different standpoint--from the observation of the analogy and homology of the organs; and accounted for the variation of species, not by the use or disuse of the organs, but on the one hand by the common original type of the organs, and on the other by the varied influence of the surroundings--the monde ambiant. Lamarck himself seems not to have been mentioned in this contest. The controversy turned much more on the question whether in observing nature we can proceed by synthesis and find in the analogies of the organisms the principles for explaining the real connection between the different organic forms, or whether the analytical process is the only correct one, and the synthetical should be discarded. The solution of it will probably be, that the one process must be supplemented by the {33} other, as Goethe has already shown in his account of this controversy; but at that time it was decided in favor of the analytical principle, and the question was for the time dropped. It came up for a second time, but created little excitement, in 1844, when an anonymous work, "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," directed the attention and the interest of scientists again to Lamarck and his doctrine. But this interest also soon came to an end, until through Darwin's first publication the half-forgotten man again suddenly attained great honor.
Those who wish to form a closer acquaintance with the different advocates of the evolution theory before Darwin's appearance, will find them carefully arranged in the historical sketch which Darwin gives in the introduction to his work on "The Origin of Species"; and the most important extracts of Lamarck's "Philosophie Zoologique" are to be found in Oscar Schmidt's "Descent and Darwinism."[1]
§ 2. Indirect Preparations.
While thus the ideas of Lamarck gradually fell into partial oblivion, yet contemporaneous with and following them arose several other series of thoughts, views, and investigations, which, although they only indirectly prepared for the revival of the evolution theory, yet exercised a deeper and more lasting influence on the minds of scientists. We refer to the ideas in regard to natural phenomena held during the first decades of our century; further, to the principles of comparative anatomy which, up to the present time, partly dependent {34} and partly independent of natural philosophy, have been expressed, valued, and admired as leading thoughts; and, lastly, to the empiric results of comparative anatomical and biological investigations in pal?ontology and geology, as attained by the help of those very principles. And even physics and astronomy had to co?perate in preparing the way for the idea of evolution.
The philosophical ideas referred to, together with the points of view and results of comparative anatomy, led more and more decisively to the idea of an original form, or type, which retains its identity in all the modifications of form in plants and animals; and of a ground-plan, which is realized in the systems of the plant and animal world in higher and higher differentiations and in more and more developed modifications, diverging farther and farther from the prototype until it reaches its highest form, still reducible to the prototypes, in the most highly organized dicotyledons in plants, and in the animal world in the mammalia, and lastly in man.
Men like Cuvier and Geoffrey St. Hilaire, who otherwise stand diametrically opposed