opher no one of his time approached Lamarck. The
period, however, in which he lived was not ripe for the hearty and
general adoption of the theory of descent. As in the organic world we
behold here and there prophetic types, anticipating, in their
generalized synthetic nature, the incoming, ages after, of more
specialized types, so Lamarck anticipated by more than half a century
the principles underlying the present evolutionary theories.

So numerous are now the adherents, in some form, of Lamarck's views,
that at the present time evolutionists are divided into Darwinians and
Lamarckians or Neolamarckians. The factors of organic evolution as
stated by Lamarck, it is now claimed by many, really comprise the
primary or foundation principles or initiative causes of the origin of
life-forms. Hence not only do many of the leading biologists of his
native country, but some of those of Germany, of the United States, and
of England, justly regard him as the founder of the theory of organic
evolution.

Besides this, Lamarck lived in a transition period. He prepared the way
for the scientific renascence in France. Moreover, his simple, unselfish
character was a rare one. He led a retired life. His youth was tinged
with romance, and during the last decade of his life he was blind. He
manfully and patiently bore adverse criticisms, ridicule,
forgetfulness, and inappreciation, while, so far from renouncing his
theoretical views, he tenaciously clung to them to his dying day.

The biography of such a character is replete with interest, and the
memory of his unselfish and fruitful devotion to science should be
forever cherished. His life was also notable for the fact that after his
fiftieth year he took up and mastered a new science; and at a period
when many students of literature and science cease to be productive and
rest from their labors, he accomplished the best work of his life--work
which has given him lasting fame as a systematist and as a philosophic
biologist. Moreover, Lamarckism comprises the fundamental principles of
evolution, and will always have to be taken into consideration in
accounting for the origin, not only of species, but especially of the
higher groups, such as orders, classes, and phyla.

This striking personage in the history of biological science, who has
made such an ineffaceable impression on the philosophy of biology,
certainly demands more than a brief _eloge_ to keep alive his memory.

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