Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution Part 35

"If the vertebral column of the human body should form the axis of this body, and sustain the head in equilibrium, as also the other parts, the man standing would be in a state of rest. But who does not know that this is not so; that the head is not articulated at its centre of gravity; that the chest and stomach, as also the viscera which these cavities contain, weigh heavily almost entirely on the anterior part of the vertebral column; that the latter rests on an oblique base, etc.? Also, as M. Richerand observes, there is needed in standing a force active and watching without ceasing to prevent the body from falling over, the weight and disposition of parts tending to make the body fall forward.

"After having developed the considerations regarding the standing posture of man, the same savant then expresses himself: 'The relative weight of the head, of the thoracic and abdominal viscera, tends therefore to throw it in front of the line, according to which all the parts of the body bear down on the ground sustaining it; a line which should be exactly perpendicular to this ground in order that the standing position may be perfect. The following fact supports this a.s.sertion: I have observed that infants with a large head, the stomach protruding and the viscera loaded with fat, accustom themselves with difficulty to stand up straight, and it is not until the end of their second year that they dare to surrender themselves to their proper forces; they stand subject to frequent falls and have a natural tendency to revert to the quadrupedal state.' (_Physiologie_, vol. ii., p. 268.)

"This disposition of the parts which cause the erect position of man, being a state of activity, and consequently fatiguing, instead of being a state of rest, would then betray in him an origin a.n.a.logous to that of the mammals, if his organization alone should be taken into consideration.

"Now in order to follow, in all its particulars, the hypothesis presented in the beginning of these observations, it is fitting to add the following considerations:

"The individuals of the dominant race previously mentioned, having taken possession of all the inhabitable places which were suitable for them, and having to a very considerable extent multiplied their necessities in proportion as the societies which they formed became more numerous, were able equally to increase their ideas, and consequently to feel the need of communicating them to their fellows. We conceive that there would arise the necessity of increasing and of varying in the same proportion the _signs_ adopted for the communication of these ideas. It is then evident that the members of this race would have to make continual efforts, and to employ every possible means in these efforts, to create, multiply, and render sufficiently varied the _signs_ which their ideas and their numerous wants would render necessary.

"It is not so with any other animals; because, although the most perfect among them, such as the _Quadrumana_, live mostly in troops, since the eminent supremacy of the race mentioned they have remained stationary as regards the improvement of their faculties, having been driven out from everywhere and banished to wild, desert, usually restricted regions, whither, miserable and restless, they are incessantly constrained to fly and hide themselves. In this situation these animals no longer contract new needs, they acquire no new ideas; they have but a small number of them, and it is always the same ones which occupy their attention, and among these ideas there are very few which they have need of communicating to the other individuals of their species. There are, then, only very few different _signs_ which they employ among their fellows, so that some movements of the body or of certain of its parts, certain hisses and cries raised by the simple inflexions of the voice, suffice them.

"On the contrary, the individuals of the dominant race already mentioned, having had need of multiplying the _signs_ for the rapid communication of their ideas, now become more and more numerous, and, no longer contented either with pantomimic signs or possible inflexions of their voice to represent this mult.i.tude of signs now become necessary, would succeed by different efforts in forming _articulated sounds_: at first they would use only a small number, conjointly with the inflexions of their voice; as the result they would multiply, vary, and perfect them, according to their increasing necessities, and according as they would be more accustomed to produce them. Indeed, the habitual exercise of their throat, their tongue, and their lips to make articulate sounds, will have eminently developed in them this faculty.

"Hence for this particular race the origin of the wonderful power of _speech_; and as the distance between the regions where the individuals composing it would be spread would favor the corruption of the signs fitted to express each idea, from this arose the origin of languages, which must be everywhere diversified.

"Then in this respect necessities alone would have accomplished everything; they would give origin to efforts; and the organs fitted for the articulation of sounds would be developed by their habitual use.

"Such would be the reflections which might be made if man, considered here as the preeminent race in question, were distinguished from the animals only by his physical characters, and if his origin were not different from theirs."

This is certainly, for the time it was written, an original, comprehensive, and bold attempt at explaining in a tentative way, or at least suggesting, the probable origin of man from some arboreal creature allied to the apes. It is as regards the actual evolutional steps supposed to have been taken by the simian ancestors of man, a more detailed and comprehensive hypothesis than that offered by Darwin in his _Descent of Man_,[197] which Lamarck has antic.i.p.ated. Darwin does not refer to this theory of Lamarck, and seems to have entirely overlooked it, as have others since his time. The theory of the change from an arboreal life and climbing posture to an erect one, and the transformation of the hinder pair of hands into the feet of the erect human animal, remind us of the very probable hypothesis of Mr. Herbert Spencer, as to the modification of the quadrumanous posterior pair of hands to form the plantigrade feet of man.

FOOTNOTES:

[195] Author's italics.

[196] "How much this unclean beast resembles man!"--_Ennius_.

"Indeed, besides other resemblances the monkey has mammae, a c.l.i.toris, nymphs, uterus, uvula, eye-lobes, nails, as in the human species; it also lacks a suspensory ligament of the neck. Is it not astonis.h.i.+ng that man, endowed with wisdom, differs so little from such a disgusting animal!"--_Linnaeus_.

[197] Vol. i., chapter iv., pp. 135-151; ii., p. 372.

CHAPTER XIX

LAMARCK'S THOUGHTS ON MORALS, AND ON THE RELATION BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

One who has read the writings of the great French naturalist, who may be regarded as the founder of evolution, will readily realize that Lamarck's mind was essentially philosophic, comprehensive, and synthetic. He looked upon every problem in a large way. His breadth of view, his moral and intellectual strength, his equably developed nature, generous in its sympathies and aspiring in its tendencies, naturally led him to take a conservative position as to the relations between science and religion. He should, as may be inferred from his frequent references to the Author of nature, be regarded as a deist.

When a very young man, he was for a time a friend of the erratic and gifted Rousseau, and was afterwards not unknown to Condorcet, the secretary of the French Academy of Sciences, so liberal in his views and so bitter an enemy of the Church; and though constantly in contact with the radical views and burning questions of that day, Lamarck throughout his life preserved his philosophic calm, and maintained his lofty tone and firm temper. We find no trace in his writings of sentiments other than the most elevated and inspiring, and we know that in character he was pure and sweet, self-sacrificing, self-denying, and free from self-a.s.sertion.

The quotations from his _Philosophie zoologique_, published in 1809, given below, will show what were the results of his meditations on the relations between science and religion. Had his way of looking at this subject prevailed, how much misunderstanding and ill-feeling between theologians and savants would have been avoided! Had his spirit and breadth of view animated both parties, there would not have been the constant and needless opposition on the part of the Church to the grand results of scientific discovery and philosophy, or too hasty dogmatism and scepticism on the part of some scientists.

In Lamarck, at the opening of the past century, we behold the spectacle of a man devoting over fifty years of his life to scientific research in biology, and insisting on the doctrine of spontaneous generation; of the immense length of geological time, so opposed to the views held by the Church; the evolution of plants and animals from a single germ, and even the origin of man from the apes, yet as earnestly claiming that nature has its Author who in the beginning established the order of things, giving the initial impulse to the laws of the universe.

As Duval says, after quoting the pa.s.sage given below: "Deux faits son a noter dans ce pa.s.sage: d'une part, les termes dignes et conciliants dans lesquels Lamarck etablit la part de la science et de la religion; cela vaut, mieux, meme en tenant compte des differences d'epoques, que les abjurations de Buffon."[198]

The pa.s.sage quoted by M. Duval is the following one:

"Surely nothing exists except by the will of the Sublime Author of all things. But can we not a.s.sign him laws in the execution of his will, and determine the method which he has followed in this respect? Has not his infinite power enabled him to create an order of things which has successively given existence to all that we see, as well as to that which exists and that of which we have no knowledge? As regards the decrees of this infinite wisdom, I have confined myself to the limits of a simple observer of nature."[199]

In other places we find the following expressions:

"There is then, for the animals as for the plants, an order which belongs to nature, and which results, as also the objects which this order makes exist, from the power which it has received from the SUPREME AUTHOR of all things. She is herself only the general and unchangeable order that this Sublime Author has created throughout, and only the totality of the general and special laws to which this order is subject. By these means, whose use it continues without change, it has given and will perpetually give existence to its productions; it varies and renews them unceasingly, and thus everywhere preserves the whole order which is the result of it."[200]

"To regard nature as eternal, and consequently as having existed from all time, is to me an abstract idea, baseless, limitless, improbable, and not satisfactory to my reason. Being unable to know anything positive in this respect, and having no means of reasoning on this subject, I much prefer to think that _all nature_ is only a result: hence, I suppose, and I am glad to admit it, a first cause, in a word, a supreme power which has given existence to nature, and which has made it in all respects what it is."[201]

"Nature, that immense totality of different beings and bodies, in every part of which exists an eternal circle of movements and changes regulated by law; totality alone unchangeable, so long as it pleases its SUBLIME AUTHOR to cause its existence, should be regarded as a whole const.i.tuted by its parts, for a purpose which its Author alone knows, and not exclusively for any one of them.

"Each part is necessarily obliged to change, and to cease to be one in order to const.i.tute another, with interests opposed to those of all; and if it has the power of reasoning it finds this whole imperfect. In reality, however, this whole is perfect and completely fulfils the end for which it was designed."[202]

Lamarck's work on general philosophy[203] was written near the end of his life, in 1820. He begins his "Discours preliminaire" by referring to the sudden loss of his eyesight, his work on the invertebrate animals being thereby interrupted. The book was, he says, "rapidly" dictated to his daughter, and the ease with which he dictated was due, he says, to his long-continued habit of meditating on the facts he had observed.

In the "Principes primordiaux" he considers man as the only being who has the power of observing nature, and the only one who has perceived the necessity of recognizing a superior and only cause, creator of the order of the wonders of the world of life. By this he is led to raise his thoughts to the _Supreme Author_ of all that exists.

"In the creation of his works, and especially those we can observe, this omnipotent Being has undoubtedly been the ruling power in pursuing the method which has pleased him, namely, his will has been:

"Either to create instantaneously and separately every particular living being observed by us, to personally care for and watch over them in all their changes, their movements, or their actions, to unremittingly care for each one separately, and by the exercise of his supreme will to regulate all their life;

"Or to reduce his creations to a small number, and among these, to inst.i.tute an order of things general and continuous, pervaded by ceaseless activity (_mouvement_), especially subject to laws by means of which all the organisms of whatever nature, all the changes they undergo, all the peculiarities they present, and all the phenomena that many of them exhibit, may be produced.

"In regard to these two modes of execution, if observation taught us nothing we could not form any opinion which would be well grounded.

But it is not so; we distinctly see that there exists an order of things truly created (_veritablement cree_), as unchangeable as its author allows, acting on matter alone, and which possesses the power of producing all visible beings, of executing all the changes, all the modifications, even the extinctions, so also the renewals or recreations that we observe among them. It is to this order of things that we have given the name of _nature_. The Supreme Author of all that exists is, then, the immediate creator of matter as also of nature, but he is only indirectly the creator of what nature can produce.

"The end that G.o.d has proposed to himself in creating matter, which forms the basis of all bodies, and nature, which divides (_divise_) this matter, forms the bodies, makes them vary, modifies them, changes them, and renews them in different ways, can be easily known to us; for the Supreme Being cannot meet with any obstacle to his will in the execution of his works; the general results of these works are necessarily the object he had in view. Thus this end could be no other than the existence of nature, of which matter alone forms the sphere, and should not be that causing the creation of any special being.

"Do we find in the two objects created, _i.e._, _matter_ and _nature_, the source of the good and evil which have almost always been thought to exist in the events of this world? To this question I shall answer that good and evil are only relative to particular objects, that they never affect by their temporary existence the general result expected (_prevu_), and that for the end which the Creator designed, there is in reality neither good nor evil, because everything in nature perfectly fulfils its object.

"Has G.o.d limited his creations to the existence of only matter and nature? This question is vain, and should remain without an answer on our part; because, being reduced to knowing anything only through observation, and to bodies alone, also to what concerns them, these being for us the only observable objects, it would be rash to speak affirmatively or negatively on this subject.

"What is a spiritual being? It is what, with the aid of the imagination, one would naturally suppose (_l'on vaudra supposer_).

Indeed, it is only by means of opposing that which is material that we can form the idea of spirit; but as this hypothetical being is not in the category of objects which it is possible for us to observe, we do not know how to take cognizance of it. The idea that we have of it is absolutely without base.

"We only know physical objects and only objects relative to these beings (_etres_): such is the condition of our nature. If our thoughts, our reasonings, our principles have been considered as metaphysical objects, these objects, then, are not beings (_etres_).

They are only relations or consequences of relations (_rapports_), or only results of observed laws.

"We know that relations are distinguished as general and special.

Among these last are regarded those of nature, form, dimension, solidity, size, quant.i.ty, resemblance, and difference; and if we add to these objects the being observed and the consideration of known laws, as also that of conventional objects, we shall have all the materials on which our thoughts are based.

"Thus being able to observe only the phenomena of nature, as well as the laws which regulate these phenomena, also the products of these last, in a word, only bodies (_corps_) and what concerns them, all that which immediately proceeds from supreme power is incomprehensible to us, as it itself [_i.e._, supreme power] is to our minds. To create, or to make anything out of nothing, this is an idea we cannot conceive of, for the reason that in all that we can know, we do not find any model which represents it. G.o.d alone, then, can create, while nature can only produce. We must suppose that, in his creations, the Divinity is not restricted to the use of any time, while, on the other hand, nature can effect nothing without the aid of long periods of time."