ith
him--all this is very Darwinian.

"The substitution of the variety-making power for 'volition,'
'muscular action,' etc. (and in plants even volition was not called
in), is in some respects only a change of names. Call a new variety
a new creation, one may say of the former, as of the latter, what
you say when you observe that the creationist explains nothing, and
only affirms 'it is so because it is so.'

"Lamarck's belief in the slow changes in the organic and inorganic
world in the year 1800 was surely above the standard of his times,
and he was right about progression in the main, though you have
vastly advanced that doctrine. As to Owen in his 'Aye Aye' paper, he
seems to me a disciple of Pouchet, who converted him at Rouen to
'spontaneous generation.'

"Have I not, at p. 412, put the vast distinction between you and
Lamarck as to 'necessary progression' strongly enough?" (To Darwin,
March 15, 1863. _Lyell's Letters_, ii., p. 365.)

Darwin, in the freedom of private correspondence, paid scant respect to
the views of his renowned predecessor, as the following extracts from
his published letters will show:

"Heaven forfend me from Lamarck nonsense of a 'tendency to
progression,' 'adaptations from the slow willing of animals,' etc.
But the conclusions I am led to are not widely different from his;
though the means of change are wholly so." (Darwin's _Life and
Letters_, ii., p. 23, 1844.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"With respect to books on this subject, I do not know of any
systematical ones, except Lamarck's, which is veritable rubbish....
Is it not strange that the author of such a book as the _Animaux
sans Vertebres_ should have written that insects, which never see
their eggs, should _will_ (and plants, their seeds) to be of
particular forms, so as to become attached to particular
objects."[57] (ii., p. 29, 1844.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Lamarck is the only exception, that I can think of, of an accurate
describer of species, at least in the Invertebrate Kingdom, who has
disbelieved in permanent species, but he in his absurd though clever
work has done the subject harm." (ii., p. 39, no date.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"To talk of climate or Lamarckian habit producing such adaptions to
other organic beings is futile." (ii., p. 121, 1858.)

On the other hand, another great Engli