d the conception,
exposition, and defence of which so laboriously occupied the second half
of his scientific career, has been assuredly too much admired by some,
who have forgotten that Lamarck had a precursor, and that that precursor
was Buffon. It has, on the other hand, been too severely condemned by
others who have involved it in its entirety in broad and sweeping
condemnation. As if it were possible that so great labour on the part of
so great a naturalist should have led him to 'a fantastic conclusion'
only--to a 'flighty error,' and, as has been often said, though not
written, to 'one absurdity the more.' Such was the language which
Lamarck heard during his protracted old age, saddened alike by the
weight of years and blindness; this was what people did not hesitate to
utter over his grave yet barely closed, and what, indeed, they are still
saying--commonly, too, without any knowledge of what Lamarck maintained,
but merely repeating at second hand bad caricatures of his teaching.

"When will the time come when we may see Lamarck's theory
discussed--and, I may as well at once say, refuted in some important
points--with at any rate the respect due to one of the most illustrious
masters of our science? And when will this theory, the hardihood of
which has been greatly exaggerated, become freed from the
interpretations and commentaries by the false light of which so many
naturalists have formed their opinion concerning it? If its author is to
be condemned, let it be, at any rate, not before he has been
heard."[191]

It is not necessary for me to give the extracts from Lamarck which M.
Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire quotes in order to show what he really
maintained, inasmuch as they will be given at greater length in the
following chapter; but I may perhaps say that I have not found M.
Geoffroy refuting Lamarck in any essential point.

Professor Haeckel says that to Lamarck "will always belong the immortal
glory of having for the first time worked out the theory of descent as
an independent scientific theory of the first order, and as the
philosophical foundation of the whole science of Biology."

. . . . . .

"The 'Philosophie Zoologique,'" continues Professor Haeckel, "is the
first connected exposition of the theory of descent carried out strictly
into all its consequences; ... and with the exception of Darwin's work,
which appeared exactly half a century later, we know of none which we
could in this respec