“Life is the result of organization.”—(?)
“Life is the principle of individuation.”—Coleridge ex. Schelling.
“Life is the twofold internal movement of composition and decomposition, at once general and continuous.”—De Blainville, who wisely added that there are “two fundamental and correlative conditions inseparable from the living being—an organism and a medium.”
“Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.”—Herbert Spencer.
CHAPTER XI
LAMARCK AS A BOTANIST
During the century preceding the time of Lamarck, botany had not flourished in France with the vigor shown in other countries. Lamarck himself frankly stated in his address to the Committee of Public Instruction of the National Convention that the study of plants had been for a century neglected by Frenchmen, and that the great progress which it had made during this time was almost entirely due to foreigners.
“I am free to say that since the distinguished Tournefort the French have remained to some extent inactive in this direction; they have produced almost nothing, unless we except some fragmentary mediocre or unimportant works. On the other hand, Linné in Sweden, Dilwillen in England, Haller in Switzerland, Jacquin in Austria, etc., have immortalized themselves by their own works, vastly extending the limit of our knowledge in this interesting part of natural history.”
What led young Lamarck to take up botanical studies, his botanical rambles about Paris, and his longer journeys in different parts of France and in other countries, his six years of unremitting labor on his Flore Française, and the immediate fame it brought him, culminating in his election as a member of the French Academy, have been already recounted.
Lamarck was thirty-four when his Flore Française appeared. It was not preceded, as in the case of most botanical works, by any preliminary papers containing descriptions of new or unknown species, and the three stout octavo volumes appeared together at the same date.