We may venture to say of Lamarck what Huxley once said of Descartes, that he expressed “the thoughts which will be everybody’s two or three centuries after” him. Only the change of belief, due to the rapid accumulation of observed facts, has come in a period shorter than “two or three centuries;” for, at the end of the very century in which Lamarck, whatever his crudities, vagueness, and lack of observations and experiments, published his views, wherein are laid the foundations on which natural selection rests, the consensus of opinion as to the direct and indirect influence of the environment, and the inadequacy of natural selection as an initial factor, was becoming stronger and deeper-rooted each year.
We must never forget or underestimate, however, the inestimable value of the services rendered by Darwin, who by his patience, industry, and rare genius for observation and experiment, and his powers of lucid exposition, convinced the world of the truth of evolution, with the result that it has transformed the philosophy of our day. We are all of us evolutionists, though we may differ as to the nature of the efficient causes.
FOOTNOTES:
[204] Vol. ii., p. 167, 1871.
[205] Vol. ii., p. 195.
[206] Vol. i., § 166, p. 456.
[207] The Factors of Organic Evolution, 1895, p. 460.
[208] Schöpfungegeschichte, 1868. The History of Creation, New York, ii., p. 355.
[209] Alcide d’Orbigny, Paléontologie française, Paris, 1840–59.
[210] Abstract in Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, xvii., December 16, 1874.