xistence and even pointed out
that this advantageously checks the rapid multiplication. "As Dr.
Krause points out, Darwin just misses the connection between this
struggle and the Survival of the Fittest."[20]

Lamarck[21] (1744-1829) seems to have thought out his theory of
evolution without any knowledge of Erasmus Darwin's which it closely
resembled. The central idea of his theory was the cumulative
inheritance of functional modifications. "Changes in environment bring
about changes in the habits of animals. Changes in their wants
necessarily bring about parallel changes in their habits. If new wants
become constant or very lasting, they form new habits, the new habits
involve the use of new parts, or a different use of old parts, which
results finally in the production of new organs and the modification
of old ones." He differed from Buffon in not attaching importance, as
far as animals are concerned, to the direct influence of the
environment, "for environment can effect no direct change whatever
upon the organisation of animals," but in regard to plants he agreed
with Buffon that external conditions directly moulded them.

Treviranus[22] (1776-1837), whom Huxley ranked beside Lamarck, was on
the whole Buffonian, attaching chief importance to the influence of a
changeful environment both in modifying and in eliminating, but he was
also Goethian, for instance in his idea that species like individuals
pass through periods of growth, full bloom, and decline. "Thus, it is
not only the great catastrophes of Nature which have caused
extinction, but the completion of cycles of existence, out of which
new cycles have begun." A characteristic sentence is quoted by Prof.
Osborn: "In every living being there exists a capability of an endless
variety of form-assumption; each possesses the power to adapt its
organisation to the changes of the outer world, and it is this power,
put into action by the change of the universe, that has raised the
simple zoophytes of the primitive world to continually higher stages
of organisation, and has introduced a countless variety of species
into animate Nature."

Goethe[23] (1749-1832), who knew Buffon's work but not Lamarck's, is
peculiarly interesting as one of the first to use the evolution-idea
as a guiding hypothesis, e.g. in the interpretation of vestigial
structures in man, and to realise that organisms express an attempt to
make a compromise between specific inertia and individual ch