als in which the
unfertilized embryos or germs are formed before generation. I then
believe that it has some foundation.--They say with good reason," he
adds, "that every living being originates from an egg.... But the
eggs being the envelope of every kind of germ, they preexist in the
individuals which produce them, before fertilization has vivified
them. The seeds of plants (which are vegetable eggs) actually exist
in the ovaries of flowers before the fertilization of these
ovaries."[112]

From whom did he get this idea that seeds or eggs are envelopes of all
sorts of germs? It is not the "evolution" of a single germ, as, for
example, an excessively minute but complete chick in the hen's egg, in
the sense held by Bonnet. Who it was he does not mention. He evidently,
however, had the Swiss biologist in mind, who held that all living
things proceed from preexisting germs.[113]

Whatever may have been his views as to the germs in the egg before
fertilization, we take it that he believed in the epigenetic development
of the plant or animal after the seed or egg was once fertilized.[114]

Lamarck did not adopt the encasement theory of Swammerdam and of Heller.
We find nothing in Lamarck's writings opposed to epigenesis. The
following passage, which bears on this subject, is translated from his
_Memoires de Physique_ (p. 250), where he contrasts the growth of
organic bodies with that of minerals.

"The body of this living being not having been formed by
_juxtaposition_, as most mineral substances, that is to say, by the
external and successive apposition of particles aggregated _en
masse_ by attraction, but essentially formed by generation, in its
principle, it has then grown by intussusception--namely, by the
introduction, the transportation, and the internal apposition of
molecules borne along and deposited between its parts; whence have
resulted the successive developments of parts which compose the body
of this living individual, and from which afterwards also result the
repairs which preserve it during a limited time."

Here, as elsewhere in his various works, Lamarck brings out the fact,
for the first time stated, that all material things are either
non-living or mineral, inorganic; or living, organic. A favorite phrase
with him is living bodies, or, as we should say, organisms. He also is
the first one to show that minerals increase by juxtaposition, while
organisms grow by i