preceding thirty years, and that his inspiration came directly from nature and not from Buffon, and least of all from the writings of Erasmus Darwin. FOOTNOTES: [158] See the comparative summary of the views of the founders of evolution at the end of Chapter XVII. [159] While Rousseau was living at Montmorency "his thought wandered confusedly round the notion of a treatise to be called 'Sensitive Morality or the Materialism of the Age,' the object of which was to examine the influence of external agencies, such as light, darkness, sound, seasons, food, noise, silence, motion, rest, on our corporeal machine, and thus, indirectly, upon the soul also."--_Rousseau_, by John Morley (p. 164). [160] Butler's _Evolution, Old and New_ (p. 244), and Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire's _Histoire naturelle générale_, tome ii., p. 404 (1859). [161] After looking in vain through both volumes of the _Recherches_ for some expression of Lamarck's earlier views, I found a mention of it in Osborn's _From the Greeks to Darwin_, p. 152, and reference to Huxley's _Evolution in Biology_, 1878 ("Darwiniana," p. 210), where the paragraphs translated above are quoted in the original. CHAPTER XVI THE STEPS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF LAMARCK'S VIEWS ON EVOLUTION BEFORE THE PUBLICATION OF HIS _PHILOSOPHIE ZOOLOGIQUE_ I. _From the Système des Animaux sans Vertèbres_ (1801). The first occasion on which, so far as his published writings show, Lamarck expressed his evolutional views was in the opening lecture[162] of his course on the invertebrate animals delivered in the spring of 1800, and published in 1801 as a preface to his _Système des Animaux sans Vertèbres_, this being the first sketch or prodromus of his later great work on the invertebrate animals. In the preface of this book, referring to the opening lecture, he says: "I have glanced at some important and philosophic views that the nature and limits of this work do not permit me to develop, but which I propose to take up elsewhere with the details necessary to show on what facts they are based, and with certain explanations which would prevent any one from misunderstanding them." It may be inferred from this that he had for some time previous meditated on this theme. It will now be interesting to see what factors of evolution Lamarck employed in this first sketch of his theory. After stating the distinctions existing between the vertebrate and invertebrate animals, and referring to the great diversity of animal forms, he goes on to say that Nature began with the most simply organized, and having formed them, "then with the aid of much time and of favorable circumstances she formed all the others." "It appears, as I have already said, that _time_ and _favorable conditions_ are the two principal means which nature has employed in giving existence to all her productions. We know that for her time has no limit, and that consequently she has it always at her disposal.