Thus we have a view of the most perfect wisdom in the contrivance of
that constitution by which the earth is made to answer, in the best
manner possible, the purpose of its intention, that is, to maintain and
perpetuate a system of vegetation, or the various races of useful
plants, or a system of living animals, which are in their turn
subservient to a system still infinitely more important--I mean a system
of intellect. Without fertility in the earth, many races of plants and
animals would soon perish, or be extinct; and with permanency in our
land it were impossible for the various tribes of plants and animals to
be dispersed over the surface of a changing earth. The fact is that
fertility, adequate to the various ends in view, is found in all the
quarters of the world, or in every country of the earth; and the
permanency of our land is such as to make it appear unalterable to
mankind in general and even to impose upon men of science, who have
endeavoured to persuade us that this earth is not to change.

Nothing but supreme power and wisdom could have reconciled those two
opposite ends of intention, so as both to be equally pursued in the
system of nature, and so equally attained as to be imperceptible to
common observation, and at the same time a proper object of the human
understanding.

LAMARCK

Zoological Philosophy

Jean Baptiste de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck, was born in Picardy,
France, Aug. I, 1744, the cadet of an ancient but impoverished
house. It was his father's desire that he should enter the Church,
but his inclination was for a military life; and having, at the age
of seventeen, joined the French army under De Broglie, he had
within twenty-four hours the good fortune so to distinguish himself
as to win his commission. When the Museum of Natural History was
brought into existence in 1794 he was sufficiently well-known as a
naturalist to be entrusted with the care of the collections of
invertebrates, comprising insects, molluscs, polyps, and worms.
Here he continued to lecture until his death in 1829. Haeckel,
classifying him in the front rank with Goethe and Darwin,
attributes to him "the imperishable glory of having been the first
to raise the theory of descent to the rank of an independent
scientific theory." The form of his theory was announced in 1801,
but was not given in detail to the world until 1809, by the