Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution Part 19

"There is in nature a general prototype in each species on which each individual is modelled, but which seems, in being realized, to change or become perfected by circ.u.mstances; so that, relatively to certain qualities, there is a singular (_bizarre_) variation in appearance in the succession of individuals, and at the same time a constancy in the entire species which appears to be admirable."

And yet we find him saying at the same period of his life, in the previous volume, that species "are the only beings in nature, beings perpetual, as ancient, as permanent as she."[144] A few pages farther on in the same volume of the same work, apparently written at the same time, he is strongly and stoutly anti-evolutional, affirming: "The imprint of each species is a type whose princ.i.p.al features are graven in characters forever ineffaceable and permanent."[145]

In this volume (iv., p. 55) he remarks that the senses, whether in man or in animals, may be greatly developed by exercise.

The impression left on the mind, after reading Buffon, is that even if he threw out these suggestions and then retracted them, from fear of annoyance or even persecution from the bigots of his time, he did not himself always take them seriously, but rather jotted them down as pa.s.sing thoughts. Certainly he did not present them in the formal, forcible, and scientific way that Erasmus Darwin did. The result is that the tentative views of Buffon, which have to be with much research extracted from the forty-four volumes of his works, would now be regarded as in a degree superficial and valueless. But they appeared thirty-four years before Lamarck's theory, and though not epoch-making, they are such as will render the name of Buffon memorable for all time.

eTIENNE GEOFFROY ST. HILAIRE.

etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire was born at etampes, April 15, 1772. He died in Paris in 1844. He was destined for the church, but his tastes were for a scientific career. His acquaintance with the Abbe Hauy and Daubenton led him to study mineralogy. He was the means of liberating Hauy from a political prison; the Abbe, as the result of the events of August, 1792, being promptly set free at the request of the Academy of Sciences. The young Geoffroy was in his turn aided by the ill.u.s.trious Hauy, who obtained for him the position of sub-guardian and demonstrator of mineralogy in the Cabinet of Natural History. At the early age of twenty-one years, as we have seen, he was elected professor of zoology in the museum, in charge of the department of mammals and birds. He was the means of securing for Cuvier, then of his own age, a position in the museum as professor-adjunct of comparative anatomy. For two years (1795 and 1796) the two youthful savants were inseparable, sharing the same apartments, the same table, the same amus.e.m.e.nts, the same studies, and their scientific papers were prepared in company and signed in common.

[Ill.u.s.tration: e. GEOFFROY ST. HILAIRE]

Geoffroy became a member of the great scientific commission sent to Egypt by Napoleon (1789-1802). By his boldness and presence of mind he, with Savigny and the botanist Delille, saved the treasures which at Alexandria had fallen into the hands of the English general in command.

In 1808 he was charged by Napoleon with the duty of organizing public instruction in Portugal. Here again, by his address and firmness, he saved the collections and exchanges made there from the hands of the English. When thirty-six years old he was elected a member of the Inst.i.tute.

In 1818 he began to discuss philosophical anatomy, the doctrine of h.o.m.ologies; he also studied the embryology of the mammals, and was the founder of teratology. It was he who discovered the vestigial teeth of the baleen whale and those of embryo birds, and the bearing of this on the doctrine of descent must have been obvious to him.

As early as 1795, before Lamarck had changed his views as to the stability of species, the young Geoffroy, then twenty-three years old, dared to claim that species may be only "_les diverses degenerations d'un meme type_." These views he did not abandon, nor, on the other hand, did he actively promulgate them. It was not until thirty years later, in his memoir on the anatomy of the gavials, that he began the series of his works bearing on the question of species. In 1831 was held the famous debates between himself and Cuvier in the Academy of Sciences. But the contest was not so much on the causes of the variation of species as on the doctrine of h.o.m.ologies and the unity of organization in the animal kingdom.

In fact, Geoffroy did not adopt the views peculiar to his old friend Lamarck, but was rather a follower of Buffon. His views were preceded by two premises.

The species is only "_fixe sous la raison du maintien de l'etat conditionnel de son milieu ambiant_."

It is modified, it changes, if the environment (_milieu ambiant_) varies, and according to the extent (selon la portee) of the variations of the latter.[146]

As the result, among recent or living beings there are no essential differences as regards them--"_c'est le meme cours d'evenements_," or "_la meme marche d'excitation_."[147]

On the other hand, the _monde ambiant_ having undergone more or less considerable change from one geological epoch to another, the atmosphere having even varied in its chemical composition, and the conditions of respiration having been thus modified,[148] the beings then living would differ in structure from their ancestors of ancient times, and would differ from them according "to the degree of the modifying power."[149]

Again, he says, "The animals living to-day have been derived by a series of uninterrupted generations from the extinct animals of the antediluvian world."[150] He gave as an example the crocodiles of the present day, which he believed to have descended from the fossil forms.

While he admitted the possibility of one type pa.s.sing into another, separated by characters of more than generic value, he always, according to his son Isidore, rejected the view which made all the living species descend "_d'une espece antediluvienne primitive_."[151] It will be seen that Geoffroy St. Hilaire's views were chiefly based on palaeontological evidence. He was throughout broad and philosophical, and his eloquent demonstration in his _Philosophie anatomique_ of the doctrine of h.o.m.ologies served to prepare the way for modern morphology, and affords one of the foundation stones on which rests the theory of descent.

Though temporarily vanquished in the debate with Cuvier, who was a forceful debater and represented the views then prevalent, a later generation acknowledges that he was in the right, and remembers him as one of the founders of evolution.

FOOTNOTES:

[125] Mr. Morley, in his _Rousseau_, gives a startling picture of the hostility of the parliament at the period (1762) when Buffon's works appeared. Not only was Rousseau hunted out of France, and his books burnt by the public executioner, but there was "hardly a single man of letters of that time who escaped arbitrary imprisonment" (p. 270); among others thus imprisoned was Diderot. At this time (1750-1765) Malesherbes (born 1721, guillotined 1794), one of the "best instructed and most enlightened men of the century," was Directeur de la Libraire. "The process was this: a book was submitted to him; he named a censor for it; on the censor's report the director gave or refused permission to print or required alterations. Even after these formalities were complied with, the book was liable to a decree of the royal council, a decree of the parliament, or else a lettre-de-cachet might send the author to the Bastille" (Morley's _Rousseau_, p. 266).

[126] _Histoire naturelle, generale et particuliere._ 1st edition.

Imprimerie royale. Paris: 1749-1804, 44 vols. 4to. Tome iv., p. 357.

This is the best of all the editions of Buffon, says Flourens, from whose _Histoire des Travaux et des Idees de Buffon_, 1st edition (Paris, 1844), we take some of the quotations and references, which, however, we have verified. We have also quoted some pa.s.sages from Buffon translated by Butler in his "Evolution, Old and New" (London, 1879).

[127] _L. c._, tome iv., p. 384 (1753). This is the first volume on the animals below man.

[128] Tome xi., p. 369 (1764).

[129] Tome xii., p. 3 (1764).

[130] Tome v., p. 59 (1755).

[131] Tome xiii., p. vii. (1765).

[132] Osborn adopts, without warrant we think, Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire's notion, stating that he "shows clearly that his opinions marked three periods." The writings of Isidore, the son of etienne Geoffroy, have not the vigor, exactness, or depth of those of his father.

[133] Tome xiv., p. 326 (1766).

[134] Tome vi., pp. 59-60 (1756).

[135] Butler, _l. c._, pp. 145-146.

[136] Tome ix., p. 127, 1761 (_ex_ Butler).

[137] Tome ix., p. 127, 1761 (_ex_ Butler).

[138] Tome vi., p. 252, 1756 (quoted from Butler, _l. c._, pp. 123-126).

[139] Quoted from Osborn, who takes it from De Lanessan.

[140] Butler, _l. c._, p. 122 (from Buffon, tome v., 1755).

[141] Tome xiv., p. 335 (1766).

[142] Tome i., p. 13.

[143] Tome xiv., p. 358.

[144] Tome xiii., p. i.

[145] Tome xiii., p. ix.

[146] _etudes progressives d'un Naturaliste_, etc., 1835, p. 107.

[147] _Ibid._

[148] _Sur l'Influence du Monde ambiant pour modifier les Formes animaux (Memoires Acad. Sciences_, xii., 1833, pp. 63, 75).

[149] _Recherches sur l'Organisation des Gavials (Memoires du Museum d'Histoire naturelle_), xii., p. 97 (1825).

[150] _Sur l'Influence du Monde ambiant_, p. 74.

[151] _Dictionnaire de la Conversation_, x.x.xi., p. 487, 1836 (quoted by I. Geoffroy St. Hilaire); _Histoire nat. gen. des Regnes organiques_, ii., 2^e partie; also _Resume_, p. 30 (1859).

CHAPTER XIV