r. We find no trace in his writings of sentiments other
than the most elevated and inspiring, and we know that in character he
was pure and sweet, self-sacrificing, self-denying, and free from
self-assertion.

The quotations from his _Philosophie zoologique_, published in 1809,
given below, will show what were the results of his meditations on the
relations between science and religion. Had his way of looking at this
subject prevailed, how much misunderstanding and ill-feeling between
theologians and savants would have been avoided! Had his spirit and
breadth of view animated both parties, there would not have been the
constant and needless opposition on the part of the Church to the grand
results of scientific discovery and philosophy, or too hasty dogmatism
and scepticism on the part of some scientists.

In Lamarck, at the opening of the past century, we behold the spectacle
of a man devoting over fifty years of his life to scientific research in
biology, and insisting on the doctrine of spontaneous generation; of the
immense length of geological time, so opposed to the views held by the
Church; the evolution of plants and animals from a single germ, and even
the origin of man from the apes, yet as earnestly claiming that nature
has its Author who in the beginning established the order of things,
giving the initial impulse to the laws of the universe.

As Duval says, after quoting the passage given below: "Deux faits son a
noter dans ce passage: d'une part, les termes dignes et conciliants dans
lesquels Lamarck etablit la part de la science et de la religion; cela
vaut, mieux, meme en tenant compte des differences d'epoques, que les
abjurations de Buffon."[198]

The passage quoted by M. Duval is the following one:

"Surely nothing exists except by the will of the Sublime Author of
all things. But can we not assign him laws in the execution of his
will, and determine the method which he has followed in this
respect? Has not his infinite power enabled him to create an order
of things which has successively given existence to all that we see,
as well as to that which exists and that of which we have no
knowledge? As regards the decrees of this infinite wisdom, I have
confined myself to the limits of a simple observer of nature."[199]

In other places we find the following expressions:

"There is then, for the animals as for the plants, an order which
belongs to nature, and which results, as als