Form and Function: A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology

by E. S. Russell

Subtle fluids play a great part in Lamarck's biology: they take the place of the soul or entelechy which the vitalists would postulate to explain organic happenings. Lamarck seems in this to follow certain of the old materialists, who conceived the soul to be formed of a matter more subtle than the ordinary.[342]

In his second law Lamarck's essentially vitalistic attitude comes out very clearly, for it states that a psychological moment enters into all new production of form, that the ultimate cause of the development of new form is the need felt by the organism. This need is of course not a conscious one, it is a need perceived by the sentiment intérieur.

In the large group of apathetic or insensitive animals, which do not possess this faculty, needs cannot be experienced; accordingly new organs are here formed directly and mechanically, by the movements of the vital fluids set in action by excitations from without—the evolution, like the behaviour, of these animals is due to the direct and physical action of the environment. "But this is not the case with the more highly organised animals which possess feeling. They experience needs, and each need felt, acting upon their 'inner feeling,' immediately directs the fluids and the forces to the part of the body where action can satisfy the need. Now, if there exists at this point an organ capable of performing the required action, it is quickly stimulated to act; and if the organ does not exist and the need is pressing and sustained, bit by bit the organ is produced and developed in proportion to the continuity and the energy of its use" (p. 155).

In intelligent animals the sentiment intérieur may be moved by thought or will.

As an example of the way in which the law works Lamarck takes the hypothetical case of a gastropod mollusc, which as it creeps along experiences dimly the need to feel the objects in front of it. It makes an effort (unconscious, be it noted) to touch these objects with the anterior portions of its head, and sends forward continually to these parts a great volume of nervous and other fluids. From these efforts and the repeated afflux of fluids there must result a development of the nerves supplying these parts. And as, along with the nervous fluids, nutritive juices constantly flow to the parts, there must result the formation of two or four tentacles in the places to which these fluids are directed. A curious mixture of mechanistic "explanations" and vitalistic hypothesis!

In his third law, that use and disuse are powerful to modify organs, Lamarck is upon more solid ground, and can point to many instances of the visible effect of these factors of change. It is of course rather closely bound up with his second law and may even be regarded as an extension of it.

The law has reference to one of the most powerful means employed by Nature to diversify species, a means which comes into play whenever the environment changes. The cause of the great diversity shown by animal species is indeed ultimately to be sought in the environment. As the imperfect and earliest forms developed they spread over the earth and invaded the utmost corners of it:—"One can imagine what an enormous variety of habitats, stations, climates, available foods, environing media, etc., animals and plants have had to endure, as the existing species were forced to change their place of abode. And although these changes have taken place with extreme slowness ... their reality, necessitated by various causes, has none the less induced the species affected by them slowly to change their manner of life and their habitual actions. Through the effects of the second and third of the laws cited above, these induced activity-changes must have brought into being new organs, and must have been able to develop them further if more frequent use was made of them; they must in the same way have been capable of bringing about the degeneration and finally the complete disappearance of existing organs which had become useless" (p. 161).

On the other hand, if the environment does not change, species remain constant.

It is to be noted that change in environment is rather the occasion than the cause of modification; the environment induces the organism to change its habitual way of life; it sets up new needs, to satisfy which the organism must modify its structure. It is the organism that takes the active part in all this, the action of the environment is indirect.

Of Lamarck's fourth law, which asserts the transmission of acquired characters, little need here be said in the way of exposition. Upon the truth of it depends of course Lamarck's whole theory. He himself never dreamed that anyone would ever dispute it.