Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution: His Life and WorkPackard, A. S. (Alpheus Spring)
History
Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution: His Life and Work
Packard, A. S. (Alpheus Spring)
Evolution (Biology); Lamarck, Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de, 1744-1829; Naturalists -- France -- Biography
Except the _éloges_ 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_, entitled _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
assistance of Philippe Salmon and Dr. A. Mondière, who with others,
under the leadership of Paul Nicole, met in 1884 and formed a _Réunion
Lamarck_ and a _Dîner 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 manuscripts; 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 noble 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 shells by the Lamarckian system,
which had replaced the old Linnean classification. 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 assumed 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 asserted their truth, and the heroic manner in which, against
adverse and contemptuous criticism, to his dying day he clung to them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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