Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution Part 3

[22] Another intended victim of La Billarderie, whose own salary had been at the same time reduced, was Faujas de Saint-Fond, one of the founders of geology. But his useful discoveries in economic geology having brought him distinction, the king had generously pensioned him, and he was retained in office on the printed _etat_ distributed by the Committee of Finance. (Hamy, _l. c._, p. 29.)

[23] Hamy, _l. c._, p. 29. This brochure, of which I possess a copy, is a small quarto pamphlet of fifteen pages, signed, on the last page, "_J. B. Lamarck, ancien Officier au Regiment de Beaujolais, de l'Academie des Sciences de Paris, Botaniste attache au Cabinet d'Histoire Naturelle du Jardin des Plantes_."

[24] Hamy, _l. c._, p. 31; also _Pieces Justificatives_, Nos. 11 _et_ 12, pp. 97-101. The Intendant of the Garden was completely ignored, and his unpopularity and inefficiency led to his resignation. But meanwhile, in his letter to Condorcet, the perpetual Secretary of the Inst.i.tute of France, remonstrating against the proposed suppression by the a.s.sembly of the place of Intendant, he partially retracted his action against Lamarck, saying that Lamarck's work, "_peut etre utile, mais n'est pas absolutement necessaire_." The Intendant, as Hamy adds, knew well the value of the services rendered by Lamarck at the Royal Garden, and that, as a partial recompense, he had been appointed botanist to the museum.

He also equally well knew that the author of the _Flore Francaise_ was in a most precarious situation and supported on his paltry salary a family of seven persons, as he was already at this time married and had five children. "But his own place was in peril, and he did not hesitate to sacrifice the poor savant whom he had himself installed as keeper of the herbarium." (Hamy, _l. c._, pp. 34, 35.)

[25] The first idea of the foundation of the Jardin dates from 1626, but the actual carrying out of the conception was in 1635. The first act of installation took place in 1640. Gui de la Brosse, in order to please his high protectors, the first physicians of the king, named his establishment _Jardin des Plantes Medicinales_. It was renovated by f.a.gon, who was born in the Jardin, and whose mother was the niece of Gui de la Brosse. By his disinterestedness, activity, and great scientific capacity, he regenerated the garden, and under his administration flourished the great professors, Duverney, Tournefort, Geoffroy the chemist, and others (Perrier, _l. c._, p. 59). f.a.gon was succeeded by Buffon, "the new legislator and second founder."

His Intendancy lasted from 1739 to 1788.

[26] Three days after, August 30th, the report was ready, the discussion began, and the foundations of the new organization were definitely laid.

"No longer any Jardin or Cabinets, but a Museum of Natural History, whose aim was clearly defined. No officers with unequal functions; all are professors and all will give instruction. They elect themselves and present to the king _a candidate for each vacant place_. _Finally, the general administration of the Museum will be confided to the officers of the establishment_, this implying the suppression of the Intendancy."

(Hamy, _l. c._, p. 37.)

[27] Hamy, _l. c._, p. 37. The Faubourg Saint Victor was a part of the Quartier Latin, and included the Jardin des Plantes.

[28] _Devis de la Depense du Jardin National des Plantes et du Cabinet d'Histoire Naturelle pour l'Annee 1793_, presented to the National Convention by Citoyen Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. In it appeared a note relative to Lamarck, which, after stating that, though full of zeal and of knowledge of botany, his time was not entirely occupied; that for two months he had written him in regard to the duties of his position; referred to the statements of two of his seniors, who repeated the old gossip as to the claim of La Billarderie that his place was useless, and also found fault with him for not recognizing the artificial system of Linne in the arrangement of the herbarium, added: "However, desirous of retaining M. La Marck, father of six children, in the position which he needs, and not wishing to let his talents be useless, after several conversations with the older officers of the Jardin, I have believed that, M. Desfontaines being charged with the botanical lectures in the school, and M. Jussieu in the neighborhood of Paris, it would be well to send M. La Marck to herborize in some parts of the kingdom, in order to complete the French flora, as this will be to his taste, and at the same time very useful to the progress of botany; thus everybody will be employed and satisfied."--Perrier, _Lamarck et le Transformisme Actuel_, pp. 13, 14. (Copied from the National Archives.) "The life of Bernardin de St. Pierre (1737-1814) was nearly as irregular as that of his friend and master [Rousseau]. But his character was essentially crafty and selfish, like that of many other sentimentalists of the first order."

(Morley's _Rousseau_, p. 437, footnote.)

[29] Joseph Laka.n.a.l was born in 1762, and died in 1845. He was a professor of philosophy in a college of the Oratory, and doctor of the faculty at Angers, when in 1792 he was sent as a representative (_depute_) to the National Convention, and being versed in educational questions he was placed on the Committee of Public Instruction and elected its president. He was the means, as Hamy states, of saving from a lamentable destruction, by rejuvenizing them, the scientific inst.i.tutions of ancient France. During the Revolution he voted for the death of Louis XVI.

Laka.n.a.l also presented a plan of organization of a National Inst.i.tute, what is now the Inst.i.tut de France, and was charged with designating the first forty-eight members, who should elect all the others. He was by the first forty-eight thus elected. Proscribed as a regicide at the second restoration, he sailed for the United States, where he was warmly welcomed by Jefferson. The United States Congress voted him five hundred acres of land. The government of Louisiana offered him the presidency of its university, which, however, he did not accept. In 1825 he went to live on the sh.o.r.es of Mobile Bay on land which he purchased from the proceeds of the sale of the land given him by Congress. Here he became a pioneer and planter.

In 1830 he manifested a desire to return to his native country, and offered his services to the new government, but received no answer and was completely ignored. But two years later, thanks to the initiative of Geoffroy St. Hilaire, who was the means of his reelection to the French Academy, he decided to return, and did so in 1837. He lived in retirement in Paris, where he occupied himself until his death in 1845 in writing a book ent.i.tled _Sejour d'un Membre de l'Inst.i.tut de France aux etats-Unis pendant vingt-deux ans_. The ma.n.u.script mysteriously disappeared, no trace of it ever having been found. (Larousse, _Grand Dictionnaire Universel_, Art. LAKa.n.a.l.) His bust now occupies a prominent place among those of other great men in the French Academy of Sciences.

[30] This is seen to be the case by the t.i.tle of the pamphlet: _Memoire sur les Cabinets d'Histoire Naturelle, et particulierement sur celui du Jardin des Plantes_.

[31] Bourguin also adds that "on one point Lamarck, with more foresight, went farther than Laka.n.a.l. He had insisted on the necessity of the appointment of four demonstrators for zoology. In the decree of June 10, 1793, they were even reduced to two. Afterwards they saw that this number was insufficient, and to-day (1863) the department of zoology is administered at the museum by four professors, in conformity with the division indicated by Lamarck."

CHAPTER IV

PROFESSOR OF INVERTEBRATE ZOoLOGY AT THE MUSEUM

Lamarck's career as a botanist comprised about twenty-five years. We now come to the third stage of his life--Lamarck the zoologist and evolutionist. He was in his fiftieth year when he a.s.sumed the duties of his professorship of the zoology of the invertebrate animals; and at a period when many men desire rest and freedom from responsibility, with the vigor of an intellectual giant Lamarck took upon his shoulders new labors in an untrodden field both in pure science and philosophic thought.

It was now the summer of 1793, and on the eve of the Reign of Terror, when Paris, from early in October until the end of the year, was in the deadliest throes of revolution. The dull thud of the guillotine, placed in front of the Tuileries, in the Place de la Revolution, which is now the Place de la Concorde, a little to the east of where the obelisk of Luxor now stands, could almost be heard by the quiet workers in the Museum, for sansculottism in its most aggressive and hideous forms raged not far from the Jardin des Plantes, then just on the border of the densest part of the Paris of the first Revolution. Lavoisier, the founder of modern chemistry, was guillotined some months later. The Abbe Hauy, the founder of crystallography, had been, the year previous, rescued from prison by young Geoffroy St. Hilaire, his neck being barely saved from the gleaming axe. Roland, the friend of science and letters, had been so hunted down that at Rouen, in a moment of despair, on hearing of his wife's death, he thrust his sword-cane through his heart.

Madame Roland had been beheaded, as also a cousin of her husband, and we can well imagine that these fateful summer and autumn days were scarcely favorable to scientific enterprises.[32] Still, however, amid the loud alarums of this social tempest, the Museum underwent a new birth which proved not to be untimely. The Minister of the Interior (Garat) invited the professors of the Museum to const.i.tute an a.s.sembly to nominate a director and a treasurer, and he begged them to present extracts of their deliberations for him to send to the executive council, "under the supervision of which the National Museum is for the future placed;"

though in general the a.s.sembly only reported to the Minister matters relating to the expenses, the first annual grant of the Museum being 100,000 livres.

Four days after, June 14th, the a.s.sembly met and adopted the name of the establishment in the following terms: _Museum d'Histoire Naturelle decrete par la Convention Nationale le 10 Juin, 1793_; and at a meeting held on the 9th of July the a.s.sembly definitely organized the first bureau, with Daubenton as director, Thouin treasurer, and Desfontaines secretary. Lamarck, as the records show, was present at all these meetings, and at the first one, June 14th, Lamarck and Fourcroy were designated as commissioners for the formation of the Museum library.

All this was done without the aid or presence of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the Intendant. The Minister of the Interior, meanwhile, had communicated to him the decision of the National Convention, and invited him to continue his duties up to the moment when the new organization should be established. After remaining in his office until July 9th, he retired from the Museum August 7th following, and finally withdrew to the country at Essones.

The organization of the Museum is the same now as in 1793, having for over a century been the chief biological centre of France, and with its magnificent collections was never more useful in the advancement of science than at this moment.

Let us now look at the composition of the a.s.sembly of professors, which formed the Board of Administration of the Museum at the time of his appointment.

The a.s.sociates of Lamarck and Geoffroy St. Hilaire, who had already been connected with the Royal Garden and Cabinet, were Daubenton, Thouin, Desfontaines, Portal, and Mertrude. The Nestor of the faculty was Daubenton, who was born in 1716. He was the collaborator of Buffon in the first part of his _Histoire Naturelle_, and the author of treatises on the mammals and of papers on the bats and other mammals, also on reptiles, together with embryological and anatomical essays. Thouin, the professor of horticulture, was the veteran gardener and architect of the Jardin des Plantes, and withal a most useful man. He was affable, modest, genial, greatly beloved by his students, a man of high character, and possessing much executive ability. A street near the Jardin was named after him. He was succeeded by Bosc. Desfontaines had the chair of botany, but his attainments as a botanist were mediocre, and his lectures were said to have been tame and uninteresting. Portal taught human anatomy, while Mertrude lectured on vertebrate anatomy; his chair was filled by Cuvier in 1795.

Of this group Lamarck was _facile princeps_, as he combined great sagacity and experience as a systematist with rare intellectual and philosophic traits. For this reason his fame has perhaps outlasted that of his young contemporary, Geoffroy St. Hilaire.

The necessities of the Museum led to the division of the chair of zoology, botany being taught by Desfontaines. And now began a new era in the life of Lamarck. After twenty-five years spent in botanical research he was compelled, as there seemed nothing else for him to undertake, to a.s.sume charge of the collection of invertebrate animals, and to him was a.s.signed that enormous, chaotic ma.s.s of forms then known as molluscs, insects, worms, and microscopic animals. Had he continued to teach botany, we might never have had the Lamarck of biology and biological philosophy. But turned adrift in a world almost unexplored, he faced the task with his old-time bravery and dogged persistence, and at once showed the skill of a master mind in systematic work.

The two new professorships in zoology were filled, one by Lamarck, previously known as a botanist, and the other by the young etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire, then twenty-two years old, who was at that time a student of Hauy, and in charge of the minerals, besides teaching mineralogy with especial reference to crystallography.

To Geoffroy was a.s.signed the four cla.s.ses of vertebrates, but in reality he only occupied himself with the mammals and birds. Afterwards Lacepede[33] took charge of the reptiles and fishes. On the other hand, Lamarck's field comprised more than nine-tenths of the animal kingdom.

Already the collections of insects, crustacea, worms, molluscs, echinoderms, corals, etc., at the Museum were enormous. At this time France began to send out those exploring expeditions to all parts of the globe which were so numerous and fruitful during the first third of the nineteenth century. The task of arranging and cla.s.sifying single-handed this enormous ma.s.s of material was enough to make a young man quail, and it is a proof of the vigor, innate ability, and breadth of view of the man that in this pioneer work he not only reduced to some order this vast horde of forms, but showed such insight and brought about such radical reforms in zoological cla.s.sification, especially in the foundation and limitation of certain cla.s.ses, an insight no one before him had evinced. To him and to Latreille much of the value of the _Regne Animal_ of Cuvier, as regards invertebrate cla.s.ses, is due.

The exact t.i.tle of the chair held by Lamarck is given in the _etat_ of persons attached to the National Museum of Natural History at the date of the 1er messidor, an II. of the Republic (1794), where he is mentioned as follows: "LAMARCK--fifty years old; married for the second time; wife _enceinte_; six children; professor of zoology, of insects, of worms, and microscopic animals." His salary, like that of the other professors, was put at 2,868 livres, 6 sous, 8 deniers.[34]

etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire[35] has related how the professorship was given to Lamarck.

"The law of 1793 had prescribed that all parts of the natural sciences should be equally taught. The insects, sh.e.l.ls, and an infinity of organisms--a portion of creation still almost unknown--remained to be treated in such a course. A desire to comply with the wishes of his colleagues, members of the administration, and without doubt, also, the consciousness of his powers as an investigator, determined M. de Lamarck: this task, so great, and which would tend to lead him into numberless researches; this friendless, unthankful task he accepted--courageous resolution, which has resulted in giving us immense undertakings and great and important works, among which posterity will distinguish and honor forever the work which, entirely finished and collected into seven volumes, is known under the name of _Animaux sans Vertebres_."

Before his appointment to this chair Lamarck had devoted considerable attention to the study of conchology, and already possessed a rather large collection of sh.e.l.ls. His last botanical paper appeared in 1800, but practically his botanical studies were over by 1793.

During the early years of the Revolution, namely, from 1789 to and including 1791, Lamarck published nothing. Whether this was naturally due to the social convulsions and turmoil which raged around the Jardin des Plantes, or to other causes, is not known. In 1792, however, Lamarck and his friends and colleagues, Bruguiere, Olivier, and the Abbe Hauy, founded the _Journal d'Histoire Naturelle_, which contains nineteen botanical articles, two on sh.e.l.ls, besides one on physics, by Lamarck.

These, with many articles by other men of science, ill.u.s.trated by plates, indicate that during the years of social unrest and upheaval in Paris, and though France was also engaged in foreign wars, the philosophers preserved in some degree, at least, the traditional calm of their profession, and pa.s.sed their days and nights in absorption in matters biological and physical. In 1801 appeared his _Systeme des Animaux sans Vertebres_, preceded by the opening discourse of his lectures on the lower animals, in which his views on the origin of species were first propounded. During the years 1793-1798, or for a period of six years, he published nothing on zoology, and during this time only one paper appeared, in 1798, on the influence of the moon on the earth's atmosphere. But as his memoirs on fire and on sound were published in 1798, it is evident that his leisure hours during this period, when not engaged in museum work and the preparation of his lectures, were devoted to meditations on physical and meteorological subjects, and most probably it was towards the end of this period that he brooded over and conceived his views on organic evolution.

It appears that he was led, in the first place, to conchological studies through his warm friendship for a fellow naturalist, and this is one of many proofs of his affectionate, generous nature. The touching story is told by etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire.[36]

"It was impossible to a.s.sign him a professorship of botany. M. de Lamarck, then forty-nine years old, accepted this change in his scientific studies to take charge of that which everybody had neglected; because it was, indeed, a heavy load, this branch of natural history, where, with so varied relations, everything was to be created. On one group he was a little prepared, but it was by accident; a self-sacrifice to friendship was the cause. For it was both to please his friend Bruguiere as well as to penetrate more deeply into the affections of this very reserved naturalist, and also to converse with him in the only language which he wished to hear, which was restricted to conversations on sh.e.l.ls, that M. de Lamarck had made some conchological studies. Oh, how, in 1793, did he regret that his friend had gone to Persia! He had wished, he had planned, that he should take the professorship which it was proposed to create. He would at least supply his place; it was in answer to the yearnings of his soul, and this affectionate impulse became a fundamental element in the nature of one of the greatest of zoological geniuses of our epoch."

Once settled in his new line of work, Lamarck, the incipient zoologist, at a period in life when many students of less flexible and energetic natures become either hide-bound and conservative, averse to taking up a different course of study, or actually cease all work and rust out--after a half century of his life had pa.s.sed, this rare spirit, burning with enthusiasm, charged like some old-time knight or explorer into a new realm and into "fresh fields and pastures new." His spirit, still young and fresh after nearly thirty years of mental toil, so unrequited in material things, felt a new stimulus as he began to investigate the lower animals, so promising a field for discovery.

He said himself:

"That which is the more singular is that the most important phenomena to be considered have been offered to our meditations only since the time when attention has been paid to the animals least perfect, and when researches on the different complications of the organization of these animals have become the princ.i.p.al foundation of their study. It is not less singular to realize that it was almost always from the examination of the smallest objects which nature presents to us, and that of considerations which seem to us the most minute, that we have obtained the most important knowledge to enable us to arrive at the discovery of her laws, and to determine her course."

After a year of preparation he opened his course at the Museum in the spring of 1794. In his introductory lecture, given in 1803, after ten years of work on the lower animals, he addressed his cla.s.s in these words:

"Indeed it is among those animals which are the most multiplied and numerous in nature, and the most ready to regenerate themselves, that we should seek the most instructive facts bearing on the course of nature, and on the means she has employed in the creation of her innumerable productions. In this case we perceive that, relatively to the animal kingdom, we should chiefly devote our attention to the invertebrate animals, because their enormous multiplicity in nature, the singular diversity of their systems of organization and of their means of multiplication, their increasing simplification, and the extreme fugacity of those which compose the lowest orders of these animals, show us, much better than the higher animals, the true course of nature, and the means which she has used and which she still unceasingly employs to give existence to all the living bodies of which we have knowledge."

During this decade (1793-1803) and the one succeeding, Lamarck's mind grew and expanded. Before 1801, however much he may have brooded over the matter, we have no utterances in print on the transformation theory.

His studies on the lower animals, and his general knowledge of the vertebrates derived from the work of his contemporaries and his observations in the Museum and menagerie, gave him a broad grasp of the entire animal kingdom, such as no one before him had. As the result, his comprehensive mind, with its powers of rapid generalization, enabled him to appreciate the series from monad (his _ebauche_) to man, the range of forms from the simple to the complex. Even though not a comparative anatomist like Cuvier, he made use of the latter's discoveries, and could understand and appreciate the gradually increasing complexity of forms; and, unlike Cuvier, realize that they were blood relations, and not separate, piece-meal creations. Animal life, so immeasurably higher than vegetable forms, with its highly complex physiological functions and varied means of reproduction, and the relations of its forms to each other and to the world around, affords facts for evolution which were novel to Lamarck, the descriptive botanist.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BIRTHPLACE OF LAMARCK. REAR VIEW, FROM THE WEST]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAISON DE BUFFON, IN WHICH LAMARCK LIVED IN PARIS.

1793-1829]

In accordance with the rules of the Museum, which required that all the professors should be lodged within the limits of the Jardin, the choice of lodgings being given to the oldest professors, Lamarck, at the time of his appointment, took up his abode in the house now known as the Maison de Buffon, situated on the opposite side of the Jardin des Plantes from the house afterwards inhabited by Cuvier, and in the angle between the Galerie de Zoologie and the Museum library.[37] With little doubt the windows of his study, where his earlier addresses, the _Recherches sur l'Organisation des Corps Vivans_, and the _Philosophie Zoologique_, were probably written, looked out upon what is now the court on the westerly side of the house, that facing the Rue Geoffroy St. Hilaire.

At the time of his entering on his duties as professor of zoology, Lamarck was in his fiftieth year. He had married twice and was the father of six children, and without fortune. He married for a third, and afterwards for a fourth time, and in all, seven children were born to him, as in the year (1794) the minute referring to his request for an indemnity states: "Il est charge de sept enfans dont un est sur les vaisseaux de la Republique." Another son was an artist, as shown by the records of the a.s.sembly of the Museum for September 23, 1814, when he asked for a chamber in the lodgings of Thouin, for the use of his son, "_peintre_."

Geoffroy St. Hilaire, in 1829, spoke of one of his sons, M. Auguste de Lamarck, as a skilful and highly esteemed engineer of Ponts-et-Chaussees, then advantageously situated.