fident feeling that his lasting fame was secure, is to be found in an
obscure little book[54] containing satirical, humorous, but perhaps not
always fair or just, characterizations and squibs concerning the
professors and aid-naturalists of the Jardin des Plantes.

"What head will not be uncovered on hearing pronounced the name of
the man whose genius was ignored and who languished steeped in
bitterness. Blind, poor, forgotten, he remained alone with a glory
of whose extent he himself was conscious, but which only the coming
ages will sanction, when shall be revealed more clearly the laws of
organization.

"Lamarck, thy abandonment, sad as it was in thy old age, is better
than the ephemeral glory of men who only maintain their reputation
by sharing in the errors of their time.

"Honor to thee! Respect to thy memory! Thou hast died in the breach
while fighting for truth, and the truth assures thee immortality."

Lamarck's theoretical views were not known in Germany until many years
after his death. Had Goethe, his contemporary (1749-1832), known of
them, he would undoubtedly have welcomed his speculations, have
expressed his appreciation of them, and Lamarck's reputation would, in
his own lifetime, have raised him from the obscurity of his later years
at Paris.

Hearty appreciation, though late in the century, came from Ernst
Haeckel, whose bold and suggestive works have been so widely read. In
his _History of Creation_ (1868) he thus estimates Lamarck's work as a
philosopher:

"To him 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."

Referring to the _Philosophie Zoologique_, he says:

"This admirable work is the first connected exposition of the theory
of descent carried out strictly into all its consequences. By its
purely mechanical method of viewing organic nature, and the strictly
philosophical proofs brought forward in it, Lamarck's work is raised
far above the prevailing dualistic views of his time; and with the
exception of Darwin's work, which appeared just half a century
later, we know of none which we could, in this respect, place by the
side of the _Philosophie Zoologique_. How far it was in advance of
its time is perhaps best seen from the circumstance that it was not
under