and cytology. As to palaeontology, which he aided in founding, he had but
the slightest idea of the geological succession of life-forms, and not
an inkling of the biogenetic law or recapitulation theory. Little did he
know or foresee that the main and strongest support of his own theory
was to be this same science of the extinct forms of life. Yet it is a
matter of interest to know what were his views or opinions on the nature
of life; whether he made any suggestions bearing on the doctrine of the
unity of nature; whether he was a vitalist or not; and whether he was a
follower of Haller and of Bonnet,[107] as was Cuvier, or pronounced in
favor of epigenesis.

We know that he was a firm believer in spontaneous generation, and that
he conceived that it took place not only in the origination of his
primeval germs or _ebauches_, but at all later periods down to the
present day.

Yet Lamarck accepted Harvey's doctrine, published in 1651, that all
living beings arose from germs or eggs.[108]

He must have known of Spallanzani's experiments, published in 1776, even
if he had not read the writings of Treviranus (1802-1805), both of whom
had experimentally disproved the theory of the spontaneous generation of
animalcules in putrid infusions, showing that the lowest organisms
develop only from germs.

The eighteenth century, though one of great intellectual activity, was,
however, as regards cosmology, geology, general physiology or biology, a
period of groping in the dim twilight, when the whole truth or even a
part of it was beyond the reach of the greatest geniuses, and they could
only seize on half-truths. Lamarck, both a practical botanist,
systematic zooelogist, and synthetic philosopher, had done his best work
before the rise of the experimental and inductive methods, when direct
observation and experiments had begun to take the place of vague _a
priori_ thinking and reasoning, so that he labored under a disadvantage
due largely to the age in which he lived.

Only the closing years of the century witnessed the rise of the
experimental methods in physics and chemistry, owing to the brilliant
work of Priestley and of Lavoisier. The foundations of general
physiology had been laid by Haller,[109] those of embryology to a
partial extent by Wolff,[110] Von Baer's work not appearing until 1829,
the year in which Lamarck died.

_Spontaneous Generation._--Lamarck's views on spontaneous generation are
stated in his _Recherch