scientific question at all until 1859. Nevertheless, a few
distinguished students, free from the current prejudice, began, at the
commencement of the nineteenth century, to make a serious attack on
the problem. The merit of this attaches particularly to what is known
as "the older school of natural philosophy," which has been so much
misrepresented, and which included Jean Lamarck, Buffon, Geoffroy St.
Hilaire, and Blainville in France; Wolfgang Goethe, Reinhold
Treviranus, Schelling, and Lorentz Oken in Germany [and Erasmus Darwin
in England].

The gifted natural philosopher who treated this difficult question
with the greatest sagacity and comprehensiveness was Jean Lamarck. He
was born at Bazentin, in Picardy, on August 1st, 1744; he was the son
of a clergyman, and was destined for the Church. But he turned to seek
glory in the army, and eventually devoted himself to science.

His Philosophie Zoologique was the first scientific attempt to sketch
the real course of the origin of species, the first "natural history
of creation" of plants, animals, and men. But, as in the case of
Wolff's book, this remarkably able work had no influence whatever;
neither one nor the other could obtain any recognition from their
prejudiced contemporaries. No man of science was stimulated to take an
interest in the work, and to develop the germs it contained of the
most important biological truths. The most distinguished botanists and
zoologists entirely rejected it, and did not even deign to reply to
it. Cuvier, who lived and worked in the same city, has not thought fit
to devote a single syllable to this great achievement in his memoir on
progress in the sciences, in which the pettiest observations found a
place. In short, Lamarck's Philosophie Zoologique shared the fate of
Wolff's theory of development, and was for half a century ignored and