Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution

Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution.

by Alpheus Spring Packard.

PREFACE

Although it is now a century since Lamarck published the germs of his theory, it is perhaps only within the past fifty years that the scientific world and the general public have become familiar with the name of Lamarck and of Lamarckism.

The rise and rehabilitation of the Lamarckian theory of organic evolution, so that it has become a rival of Darwinism; the prevalence of these views in the United States, Germany, England, and especially in France, where its author is justly regarded as the real founder of organic evolution, has invested his name with a new interest, and led to a desire to learn some of the details of his life and work, and of his theory as he unfolded it in 1800 and subsequent years, and finally expounded it in 1809. The time seems ripe, therefore, for a more extended sketch of Lamarck and his theory, as well as of his work as a philosophical biologist, than has yet appeared.

But the seeker after the details of his life is baffled by the general ignorance about the man--his antecedents, his parentage, the date of his birth, his early training and education, his work as a professor in the Jardin des Plantes, the house he lived in, the place of his burial, and his relations to his scientific contemporaries.

Except the _eloges_ of Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Cuvier, and the brief notices of Martins, Duval, Bourguignat, and Bourguin, there is no special biography, however brief, except a _brochure_ of thirty-one pages, reprinted from a few scattered articles by the distinguished anthropologist, M. Gabriel de Mortillet, in the fourth and last volume of a little-known journal, _l'Homme_, ent.i.tled _Lamarck. Par un Groupe de Transformistes, ses Disciples_, Paris, 1887. This exceedingly rare pamphlet was written by the late M. Gabriel de Mortillet, with the a.s.sistance of Philippe Salmon and Dr. A. Mondiere, who with others, under the leadership of Paul Nicole, met in 1884 and formed a _Reunion Lamarck_ and a _Diner Lamarck_, to maintain and perpetuate the memory of the great French transformist. Owing to their efforts, the exact date of Lamarck's birth, the house in which he lived during his lifetime at Paris, and all that we shall ever know of his place of burial have been established. It is a lasting shame that his remains were not laid in a grave, but were allowed to be put into a trench, with no headstone to mark the site, on one side of a row of graves of others better cared for, from which trench his bones, with those of others unknown and neglected, were exhumed and thrown into the catacombs of Paris. Lamarck left behind him no letters or ma.n.u.scripts; nothing could be ascertained regarding the dates of his marriages, the names of his wives or of all his children. Of his descendants but one is known to be living, an officer in the army. But his aims in life, his undying love of science, his n.o.ble character and generous disposition are constantly revealed in his writings.

The name of Lamarck has been familiar to me from my youth up. When a boy, I used to arrange my collection of sh.e.l.ls by the Lamarckian system, which had replaced the old Linnean cla.s.sification. For over thirty years the Lamarckian factors of evolution have seemed to me to afford the foundation on which natural selection rests, to be the primary and efficient causes of organic change, and thus to account for the origin of variations, which Darwin himself a.s.sumed as the starting point or basis of his selection theory. It is not lessening the value of Darwin's labors, to recognize the originality of Lamarck's views, the vigor with which he a.s.serted their truth, and the heroic manner in which, against adverse and contemptuous criticism, to his dying day he clung to them.

During a residence in Paris in the spring and summer of 1899, I spent my leisure hours in gathering material for this biography. I visited the place of his birth--the little hamlet of Bazentin, near Amiens--and, thanks to the kindness of the schoolmaster of that village, M. Duval, was shown the house where Lamarck was born, the records in the old parish register at the _mairie_ of the birth of the father of Lamarck and of Lamarck himself. The Jesuit Seminary at Amiens was also visited, in order to obtain traces of his student life there, though the search was unsuccessful.

My thanks are due to Professor A. Giard of Paris for kind a.s.sistance in the loan of rare books, for copies of his own essays, especially his _Lecon d'Ouverture des Cours de l'evolution des etres organises_, 1888, and in facilitating the work of collecting data. Introduced by him to Professor Hamy, the learned anthropologist and archivist of the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, I was given by him the freest access to the archives in the Maison de Buffon, which, among other papers, contained the MS. _Archives du Museum_; _i.e._, the _Proces verbaux des Seances tenues par les Officiers du Jardin des Plantes_, from 1790 to 1830, bound in vellum, in thirty-four volumes. These were all looked through, though found to contain but little of biographical interest relating to Lamarck, beyond proving that he lived in that ancient edifice from 1793 until his death in 1829. Dr. Hamy's elaborate history of the last years of the Royal Garden and of the foundation of the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, in the volume commemorating the centennial of the foundation of the Museum, has been of essential service.

My warmest thanks are due to M. Adrien de Mortillet, formerly secretary of the Society of Anthropology of Paris, for most essential aid. He kindly gave me a copy of a very rare pamphlet, ent.i.tled _Lamarck. Par un Groupe de Transformistes, ses Disciples_. He also referred me to notices bearing on the genealogy of Lamarck and his family in the _Revue de Gascogne_ for 1876. To him also I am indebted for the privilege of having electrotypes made of the five ill.u.s.trations in the _Lamarck_, for copies of the composite portrait of Lamarck by Dr. Gachet, and also for a photograph of the _Acte de Naissance_ reproduced by the late M. Salmon.

I have also to acknowledge the kindness shown me by Dr. J. Deniker, the librarian of the Bibliotheque du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle.

I had begun in the museum library, which contains nearly if not every one of Lamarck's publications, to prepare a bibliography of all of Lamarck's writings, when, to my surprise and pleasure, I was presented with a very full and elaborate one by the a.s.sistant-librarian, M. G.o.defroy Malloisel.

To Professor Edmond Perrier I am indebted for a copy of his valuable _Lamarck et le Transformisme Actuel_, reprinted from the n.o.ble volume commemorative of the centennial of the foundation of the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, which has proved of much use.

Other sources from which biographical details have been taken are Cuvier's _eloge_, and the notice of Lamarck, with a list of many of his writings, in the _Revue biographique de la Societe malacologique de France_, 1886. This notice, which is ill.u.s.trated by three portraits of Lamarck, one of which has been reproduced, I was informed by M. Paul Kleinsieck was prepared by the late J. R. Bourguignat, the eminent malacologist and anthropologist. The notices by Professor Mathias Duval and by L. A. Bourguin have been of essential service.

As regards the account of Lamarck's speculative and theoretical views, I have, so far as possible, preferred, by abstracts and translations, to let him tell his own story, rather than to comment at much length myself on points about which the ablest thinkers and students differ so much.

It is hoped that Lamarck's writings referring to the evolution theory may, at no distant date, be reprinted in the original, as they are not bulky and could be comprised in a single volume.

This life is offered with much diffidence, though the pleasure of collecting the materials and of putting them together has been very great.

BROWN UNIVERSITY, PROVIDENCE, R. I., _October, 1901._

LAMARCK, THE FOUNDER OF EVOLUTION. HIS LIFE AND WORK

CHAPTER I

BIRTH, FAMILY, YOUTH, AND MILITARY CAREER

The life of Lamarck is the old, old story of a man of genius who lived far in advance of his age, and who died comparatively unappreciated and neglected. But his original and philosophic views, based as they were on broad conceptions of nature, and touching on the burning questions of our day, have, after the lapse of a hundred years, gained fresh interest and appreciation, and give promise of permanent acceptance.

The author of the _Flore Francaise_ will never be forgotten by his countrymen, who called him the French Linne; and he who wrote the _Animaux sans Vertebres_ at once took the highest rank as the leading zoologist of his period. But Lamarck was more than a systematic biologist of the first order. Besides rare experience and judgment in the cla.s.sification of plants and of animals, he had an unusually active, inquiring, and philosophical mind, with an originality and boldness in speculation, and soundness in reasoning and in dealing with such biological facts as were known in his time, which have caused his views as to the method of organic evolution to again come to the front.

As a zoological philosopher no one of his time approached Lamarck. The period, however, in which he lived was not ripe for the hearty and general adoption of the theory of descent. As in the organic world we behold here and there prophetic types, antic.i.p.ating, in their generalized synthetic nature, the incoming, ages after, of more specialized types, so Lamarck antic.i.p.ated by more than half a century the principles underlying the present evolutionary theories.

So numerous are now the adherents, in some form, of Lamarck's views, that at the present time evolutionists are divided into Darwinians and Lamarckians or Neolamarckians. The factors of organic evolution as stated by Lamarck, it is now claimed by many, really comprise the primary or foundation principles or initiative causes of the origin of life-forms. Hence not only do many of the leading biologists of his native country, but some of those of Germany, of the United States, and of England, justly regard him as the founder of the theory of organic evolution.

Besides this, Lamarck lived in a transition period. He prepared the way for the scientific renascence in France. Moreover, his simple, unselfish character was a rare one. He led a retired life. His youth was tinged with romance, and during the last decade of his life he was blind. He manfully and patiently bore adverse criticisms, ridicule, forgetfulness, and inappreciation, while, so far from renouncing his theoretical views, he tenaciously clung to them to his dying day.

The biography of such a character is replete with interest, and the memory of his unselfish and fruitful devotion to science should be forever cherished. His life was also notable for the fact that after his fiftieth year he took up and mastered a new science; and at a period when many students of literature and science cease to be productive and rest from their labors, he accomplished the best work of his life--work which has given him lasting fame as a systematist and as a philosophic biologist. Moreover, Lamarckism comprises the fundamental principles of evolution, and will always have to be taken into consideration in accounting for the origin, not only of species, but especially of the higher groups, such as orders, cla.s.ses, and phyla.

This striking personage in the history of biological science, who has made such an ineffaceable impression on the philosophy of biology, certainly demands more than a brief _eloge_ to keep alive his memory.

Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck, was born August 1, 1744, at Bazentin-le-Pet.i.t. This little village is situated in Picardy, or what is now the Department of the Somme, in the Arrondiss.e.m.e.nt de Peronne, Canton d'Albert, a little more than four miles from Albert, between this town and Bapaume, and near Longueval, the nearest post-office to Bazentin. The village of Bazentin-le-Grand, composed of a few more houses than its sister hamlet, is seen half a mile to the southeast, shaded by the little forest such as borders nearly every town and village in this region. The two hamlets are pleasantly situated in a richly cultivated country, on the chalk uplands or downs of Picardy, amid broad acres of wheat and barley variegated with poppies and the purple cornflower, and with roadsides shaded by tall poplars.

The peasants to the number of 251 compose the diminishing population.

There were 356 in 1880, or about that date. The silence of the single little street, with its one-storied, thatched or tiled cottages, is at infrequent intervals broken by an elderly dame in her _sabots_, or by a creaking, rickety village cart driven by a farmer-boy in blouse and hob-nailed shoes. The largest inhabited building is the _mairie_, a modern structure, at one end of which is the village school, where fifteen or twenty urchins enjoy the instructions of the worthy teacher.

A stone church, built in 1774, and somewhat larger than the needs of the hamlet at present require, raises its tower over the quiet scene.

Our pilgrimage to Bazentin had for its object the discovery of the birthplace of Lamarck, of which we could obtain no information in Paris.

Our guide from Albert took us to the _mairie_, and it was with no little satisfaction that we learned from the excellent village teacher, M. Duval, that the house in which the great naturalist was born was still standing, and but a few steps away, in the rear of the church and of the _mairie_. With much kindness he left his duties in the schoolroom, and accompanied us to the ancient structure.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BIRTHPLACE OF LAMARCK, FRONT VIEW]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BIRTHPLACE OF LAMARCK]

The modest _chateau_ stands a few rods to the westward of the little village, and was evidently the seat of the leading family of the place.

It faces east and is a two-storied house of the shape seen everywhere in France, with its high, incurved roof; the walls, nearly a foot and a half thick, built of brick; the corners and windows of blocks of white limestone. It is about fifty feet long and twenty-five feet wide. Above the roof formerly rose a small tower. There is no porch over the front door. Within, a rather narrow hall pa.s.ses through the centre, and opens into a large room on each side. What was evidently the drawing-room or _salon_ was a s.p.a.cious apartment with a low white wainscot and a heavy cornice. Over the large, roomy fireplace is a painting on the wood panel, representing a rural scene, in which a shepherdess and her lover are engaged in other occupations than the care of the flock of sheep visible in the distance. Over the doorway is a smaller but quaint painting of the same description. The house is uninhabited, and perhaps uninhabitable--indeed almost a ruin--and is used as a storeroom for wood and rubbish by the peasants in the adjoining house to the left, on the south.

The ground in front was cultivated with vegetables, not laid down to a lawn, and the land stretched back for perhaps three hundred to four hundred feet between the old garden walls.

Here, amid these rural scenes, even now so beautiful and tranquil, the subject of our sketch was born and lived through his infancy and early boyhood.[1]

If his parents did not possess an ample fortune, they were blessed with a numerous progeny, for Lamarck was the eleventh and youngest child, and seems to have survived all the others. Biographers have differed as to the date of the birth of Lamarck.[2] Happily the exact date had been ascertained through the researches of M. Philippe Salmon; and M. Duval kindly showed us in the thin volume of records, with its tattered and torn leaves, the register of the _Acte de Naissance_, and made a copy of it, as follows:

_Extrait du Registre aux Actes de Bapteme de la Commune de Bazentin, pour l'Annee 1744._

L'an mil sept cent quarante-quatre, le premier aout est ne en legitime mariage et le lendemain a ete baptise par moy cure soussigne Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine, fils de Messire Jacques Philippe de Monet, chevalier de Lamarck, seigneur des Bazentin grand et pet.i.t et de haute et puissante Dame Marie Francoise de Fontaine demeurant en leur chateau de Bazentin le pet.i.t, son parrain a ete Messire Jean Baptiste de Fosse, pretre-chanoine de l'eglise collegiale de St. Farcy de Peronne, y demeurant, sa marraine Dame Antoinette Francoise de Bucy, niece de Messire Louis Joseph Michelet, chevalier, ancien commissaire de l'artillerie de France demeurante au chateau de Guillemont, qui ont signe avec mon dit sieur de Bazentin et nous.

Ont signe: De Fosse, De Bucy Michelet, Bazentin. Cozette, cure.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ACT OF BIRTH]

Of Lamarck's parentage and ancestry there are fortunately some traces.

In the _Registre aux Actes de Bapteme pour l'Annee 1702_, still preserved in the _mairie_ of Bazentin-le-Pet.i.t, the record shows that his father was born in February, 1702, at Bazentin. The infant was baptised February 16, 1702, the permission to the _cure_ by Henry, Bishop of Amiens, having been signed February 3, 1702. Lamarck's grandparents were, according to this certificate of baptism, Messire Philippe de Monet de Lamarck, Ecuyer, Seigneur des Bazentin, and Dame Magdeleine de Lyonne.