|
I
here
give
a
sketch
of
the
progress
of
opinion
on
the
Origin
of
Species.
→The
great
majority
of
naturalists
that
species
immutable
productions,
and
been
separately
created.
This
view
has
been
ably
maintained
by
many
authors.
Some
few
naturalists,
on
the
other
hand,
that
species
undergo
modification,
and
that
the
existing
forms
of
life
→have descended
by
true
generation
pre-existing
forms.
Passing
over
→authors from
the
classical
→period to that of Buffon, with whose writings I am not familiar,
↑
was
the
first
man
whose
conclusions
on
subject
excited
much
attention.
This
justly-celebrated
first
published
his
views
in
much
enlarged
them
in
1809
in
his
'Philosophie
Zoologique,'
and
subsequently,
in
1815,
in
Introduction
to
his
Nat.
des
Animaux
sans
In
these
→works
he
upholds
the
doctrine
that
all
species,
including
man,
are
descended
from
other
species.
He
first
did
the
eminent
service
of
arousing
attention
to
the
probability
of
all
change
in
the
as
well
as
in
the
inorganic
being
the
result
of
law,
and
not
of
miraculous
interposition.
Lamarck
seems
to
have
been
chiefly
led
to
his
conclusion
on
the
gradual
change
of
species,
by
the
difficulty
of
distinguishing
species
and
varieties,
by
the
almost
perfect
of
forms
in
certain
groups,
and
by
the
analogy
of
domestic
productions.
With
respect
to
the
means
of
modification,
he
attributed
something
to
the
direct
action
of
the
physical
conditions
of
life,
something
to
the
crossing
of
already
existing
forms,
and
much
to
use
and
disuse,
that
is,
to
the
effects
of
habit.
To
this
latter
agency
he
seems
to
attribute
all
the
beautiful
adaptations
in
as
the
long
neck
of
the
giraffe
for
browsing
on
the
branches
of
trees.
But
he
likewise
believed
in
a
law
of
progressive
development;
and
as
all
the
forms
of
life
thus
to
progress,
in
order
to
account
for
the
existence
at
the
present
day
of
simple
productions,
he
that
such
forms
now
spontaneously
generated.
∗
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