Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution

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This manly and able plea in his own defence also comprised a broad,
comprehensive plan for the organization and development of a great
national museum, combining both vast collections and adequate means of
public instruction. The paper briefly stated, in courteous language,
what he wished to say to public men, in general animated with good
intentions, but little versed in the study of the sciences and the
knowledge of their application. It praised, in fit terms, the work of
the National Assembly, and gave, without too much emphasis, the
assurance of an entire devotion to the public business. Then in a very
clear and comprehensive way were given all the kinds of service which an
establishment like the Royal Garden should render to the sciences and
arts, and especially to agriculture, medicine, commerce, etc. Museums,
galleries, and botanical gardens; public lectures and demonstrations in
the museum and school of botany; an office for giving information, the
distribution of seeds, etc.--all the resources already so varied, as
well as the facilities for work at the Jardin, passed successively in
review before the representatives of the country, and the address ended
in a modest request to the Assembly that its author be allowed a few
days to offer some observations regarding the future organization of
this great institution.

The Assembly, adopting the wise views announced in the manifest which
had been presented by the officers of the Jardin and Cabinet, sent the
address to the Committee, and gave a month's time to the petitioners to
prepare and present a plan and regulations which should establish the
organization of their establishment.[24]

It was in 1790 that the decisive step was taken by the officers of the
Royal Garden[25] and Cabinet of Natural History which led to the
organization of the present Museum of Natural History as it is to-day.
Throughout the proceedings, Lamarck, as at the outset, took a prominent
part, his address having led the Assembly to invite the officers of the
double establishment to draw up rules for its government.

The officers met together August 23d, and their distrust and hostility
against the Intendant were shown by their nomination of Daubenton, the
Nestor of the French savants, to the presidency, although
La Billarderie, as representing the royal authority, was present at the
meeting. At the second meeting (August 24th) he took no part in the
proceedings, and absented himself from the third, held on August 27,
1790. It will be seen that even while the office of Intendant lasted,
that official took no active part in the meetings or in the work of the
institution, and from that day to this it has been solely under the
management of a director and scientific corps of professors, all of them
original investigators as well as teachers. Certainly the most practical
and efficient sort of organization for such an establishment.[26]

Lamarck, though holding a place subordinate to the other officers, was
present, as the records of the proceedings of the officers of the Jardin
des Plantes at this meeting show.

During the middle of 1791, the Intendant, La Billarderie, after "four
years of incapacity," placed his resignation in the hands of the king.
The Minister of the Interior, instead of nominating Daubenton as
Intendant, reserved the place for a _protege_, and, July 1, 1791, sent
in the name of Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the
distinguished author of _Paul et Virginie_ and of _Etudes sur la
Nature_. The new Intendant was literary in his tastes, fond of nature,
but not a practical naturalist. M. Hamy wittily states that "Bernardin
Saint-Pierre contemplated and dreamed, and in his solitary meditations
had imagined a system of the world which had nothing in common with that
which was to be seen in the Faubourg Saint Victor, and one can readily
imagine the welcome that the officers of the Jardin gave to the singular
naturalist the Tuileries had sent them."[27]

Lamarck suffered an indignity from the intermeddling of this second
Intendant of the Jardin. In his budget of expenses[28] sent to the
Minister of the Interior, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre took occasion to
refer to Lamarck in a disingenuous and blundering way, which may have
both amused and disgusted him.

But the last days of the Jardin du Roi were drawing to a close, and a
new era in French natural science, signalized by the reorganization of
the Jardin and Cabinet under the name of the _Museum d'Histoire
Naturelle_, was dawning. On the 6th of February, 1793, the National
Convention, at the request of Lakanal,[29] ordered the Committees of
Public Instruction and of Finances to at once make a report on the new
organization of the administration of the Jardin des Plantes.

Lakanal consulted with Daubenton, and inquired into the condition and
needs of the establishment; Daubenton placed in his hands the brochure
of 1790, written by Lamarck. The next day Lakanal, after a short
conference with his colleagues of the Committee of Public Instruction,
read in the tribune a short report and a decree which the Committee
adopted without discussion.

Their minds were elsewhere, for grave news had come in from all
quarters. The Austrians were bombarding Valenciennes, the Prussians had
invested Mayence, the Spanish were menacing Perpignan, and bands of
Vendeans had seized Saumur after a bloody battle; while at Caen, at
Evreux, at Bordeaux, at Marseilles, and elsewhere, muttered the thunders
of the outbreaks provoked by the proscription of the Girondins. So that
under these alarming conditions the decree of the 10th of June, in
spite of its importance to science and higher learning in France, was
passed without discussion.

In his _Lamarck_ De Mortillet states explicitly that Lamarck, in his
address of 1790, changed the name of the Jardin du Roi to Jardin des
Plantes.[30] As the article states, "Entirely devoted to his studies,
Lamarck entered into no intrigue under the falling monarchy, so he
always remained in a position straitened and inferior to his merits." It
was owing to this and his retired mode of life that the single-minded
student of nature was not disturbed in his studies and meditations by
the Revolution. And when the name of the Jardin du Roi threatened to be
fatal to this establishment, it was he who presented a memoir to
transform it, under the name of Jardin des Plantes, into an institution
of higher instruction, with six professors. In 1793, Lakanal adopted
Lamarck's plan, and, enlarging upon it, created twelve chairs for the
teaching of the natural sciences.

Bourguin thus puts the matter:

"In June, 1793, Lakanal, having learned that 'the Vandals' (that is
his expression) had demanded of the tribune of the Convention the
suppression of the Royal Garden, as being an annex of the king's
palace, recurred to the memoirs of Lamarck presented in 1790 and
gave his plan of organization. He inspired himself with Lamarck's
ideas, but enlarged upon them. Instead of six positions of
professors-administrative, which Lamarck asked for, Lakanal
established twelve chairs for the teaching of different branches of
natural science."[31]

FOOTNOTES:

[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 Institute of
France, remonstrating against the proposed suppression by the Assembly
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
Fagon, 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). Fagon 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 Lakanal 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
institutions of ancient France. During the Revolution he voted for the
death of Louis XVI.

Lakanal also presented a plan of organization of a National Institute,
what is now the Institut 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 shores 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 entitled _Sejour d'un Membre de l'Institut de France
aux Etats-Unis pendant vingt-deux ans_. The manuscript mysteriously
disappeared, no trace of it ever having been found. (Larousse, _Grand
Dictionnaire Universel_, Art. LAKANAL.) 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 title 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 Lakanal. He had insisted on the necessity of the
appointment of four demonstrators for zooelogy. 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 zooelogy is
administered at the museum by four professors, in conformity with the
division indicated by Lamarck."

CHAPTER IV

PROFESSOR OF INVERTEBRATE ZOOeLOGY 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 zooelogist and
evolutionist. He was in his fiftieth year when he assumed the duties of
his professorship of the zooelogy 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
Hauey, 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 constitute an assembly 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 assembly 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 assembly 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 assembly 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 assembly of professors, which
formed the Board of Administration of the Museum at the time of his
appointment.

The associates 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
zooelogy, 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 assume charge of the collection of invertebrate animals,
and to him was assigned that enormous, chaotic mass 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 zooelogy 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 Hauey, and in charge of the minerals, besides teaching
mineralogy with especial reference to crystallography.

To Geoffroy was assigned the four classes 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 classifying single-handed
this enormous mass 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 zooelogical classification, especially in the
foundation and limitation of certain classes, 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 classes, is due.

The exact title 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 zooelogy, 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, shells, 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 shells. 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 Hauey,
founded the _Journal d'Histoire Naturelle_, which contains nineteen
botanical articles, two on shells, besides one on physics, by Lamarck.
These, with many articles by other men of science, illustrated 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 passed 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 zooelogy, 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.

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