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
"A man of vigorous, profound ideas, and very often admirably
generalized, Lamarck conceived them with a view to the public good.
If he met, as often happened, with great opposition, he spoke of it
as a condition imposed on every one who begins a reform. Moreover,
the great age, the infirmities, but especially the grievous
blindness of M. de Lamarck had reserved for him another lot. This
great and strong mind could enjoy some consolation in knowing the
judgment of posterity, which for him began in his own lifetime. When
his last tedious days, useless to science, had arrived, when he had
ceased to be subjected to rivalry, envy and passion became
extinguished and justice alone remained. De Lamarck then heard
impartial voices, the anticipated echo of posterity, which would
judge him as history will judge him. Yes, the scientific world has
pronounced its judgment in giving him the name of 'the French
Linné,' thus linking together the two men who have both merited a
triple crown by their works on general natural history, zoölogy and
botany, and whose names, increasing in fame from age to age, will
both be handed down to the remotest posterity."[52]
Also in his _Études sur la Vie, les Ouvrages, et les Doctrines de
Buffon_ (1838), Geoffroy again, with much warmth of affection, says:
"Attacked on all sides, injured likewise by odious ridicule,
Lamarck, too indignant to answer these cutting epigrams, submitted
to the indignity with a sorrowful patience.... Lamarck lived a long
while poor, blind, and forsaken, but not by me; I shall ever love
and venerate him."[53]
The following evidently heartfelt and sincere tribute to his memory,
showing warm esteem and thorough respect for Lamarck, and also a
confident feeling that his lasting fame was secure, is to be found in an
obscure little book[54] containing satirical, humorous, but perhaps not
always fair or just, characterizations and squibs concerning the
professors and aid-naturalists of the Jardin des Plantes.
"What head will not be uncovered on hearing pronounced the name of
the man whose genius was ignored and who languished steeped in
bitterness. Blind, poor, forgotten, he remained alone with a glory
of whose extent he himself was conscious, but which only the coming
ages will sanction, when shall be revealed more clearly the laws of
organization.
"Lamarck, thy abandonment, sad as it was in thy old age, is better
than the ephemeral glory of men who only maintain their reputation
by sharing in the errors of their time.
"Honor to thee! Respect to thy memory! Thou hast died in the breach
while fighting for truth, and the truth assures thee immortality."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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