But in spite of these handicaps, Lamarck did a very important work. He not only stated his own position very clearly, marshalling such facts as were at his disposal to its support; he devised a branching system of animal descent which approximated the modern “evolutionary tree” and represented far more truly than did the Aristotelian chain the true state of things. He argued strongly and clearly against the fallacious doctrine of special creations and numerous geologic catastrophes which, supposedly, annihilated all of the life on earth at the particular times of their occurrence and made a long series of new creations necessary. Perhaps the greatest of all Lamarck’s achievements was his clear statements of the problems of evolution. As one writer has said, he asked every one of the big, important questions which later evolutionists have had to answer, and by the clear phrasing of his questions, made the answers thereto the more easy. * * * * * In all France there was only one man who was willing to champion this blind naturalist in his stand for evolution. Geoffrey St.-Hilaire was at first a follower of Buffon, but he later became convinced of the value of Lamarck’s work, and even went so far in his belief as to champion Lamarck in a public debate with the great Cuvier. Despite the fact that the debate brought a certain fame to St.-Hilaire, he was judged the loser, and the affair was hailed as a great and conclusive victory for those who upheld the theory of special creation. Although St.-Hilaire believed in the truth of organic evolution, he did not wholly agree with Lamarck. He supposed that environment--that is, surrounding conditions--determined the changes that took place in animals, and preceded some of the most modern of evolutionists by teaching that one species might arise suddenly from an earlier one, without any intermediate forms. As a result of these sudden changes, it was, said St.-Hilaire, often unnecessary to produce the “missing links” over which adverse critics made such a to-do. It was also unnecessary to show why variations would not be wiped out before they were firmly established. According to his hypothesis, each new form was complete, and no amount of normal interbreeding with other forms would produce fertile hybrids between the two. We now come to one of the most interesting, and most remarkable of evolutionists. Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) was an anatomist, a philosopher, and a great poet, and thus brought to the problem of organic evolution a breadth of vision equalled by but few of the workers who preceded him. As Osborn states: