Lamarck also clearly affirms the fact of spontaneous generation. "I hope to prove," he says, "that nature possesses means and faculties for the production of all the forms which we so much admire. Rudimentary animals and plants have {162} been formed, and are still being formed to-day, by spontaneous generation." Lamarck himself gives a resume of his doctrine in the following six propositions:-- 1. "All the organized bodies of our globe are veritable productions of Nature, which she has successively formed during the lapse of ages. 2. "Nature began, and still recommences day by day, with the production of the simplest organic forms. These so-called spontaneous generations are her direct work, the first sketches as it were of organization. 3. "The first sketches of an animal or a vegetable growth being begun under favourable conditions, the faculties of commencing life and of organic movement thus established have gradually developed little by little the various parts and organs, which in process of time have become diversified. 4. "The faculty of growth is inherent in every part of an organized body; it is the primary effect of life. This faculty of growth has given rise to the various modes of multiplication and regeneration of the individual, and by its means any progress which may have been acquired in the composition and forms of the organism has been preserved. 5. "All living things which exist at the present day have been successively formed by this means, aided by a long lapse of time, by favourable conditions, and by the changes on the surface of the globe--in a word, by the power which new situations and new habits have of modifying the organs of a body which is endowed with life. 6. "Since all living things have undergone more or less change in their organization, the species which have been thus insensibly and successively produced can have but a relative constancy, and can be of no very great antiquity." The admirable work of Lamarck was absolutely neglected in France, where it was treated as unworthy even of consideration. This neglect profoundly afflicted Lamarck, who gradually sank a victim to the opposition of his contemporaries. He left, however, one disciple, Etienne Jeoffroy St. {163} Hilaire, but he too was soon reduced to silence under the weight of authority of his adversaries. [Illustration: FIG. 62.--Osmotic vegetation.]