Origin of Species… • Historical sketch… (…2a)

≣  •  D a r w i n  (1 8 5 9,  1 8 7 2⁶)  •  … o f  t h e  p r o g r e s s  o f  o p i n i o n …  •  √it

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[⇐]  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 nature; — such 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 tend to progress, in order to account for the existence at the present day of simple productions, he maintains that such forms are now spontaneously generated [*].

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NOTES
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[*]. I have taken the date of the first publication of Lamarck from Isid. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire’s (‹Hist. Nat. Générale›, tom. ii. p. 405, 1859) excellent history of opinion on this subject. In this work a full account is given of Buffon’s conclusions on the same subject. It is curious how largely my grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, anticipated the views and erroneous grounds of opinion of Lamarck in his ‹Zoonomia› (vol. i. pp. 500-510), published in 1794. According to Isid. Geoffroy there is no doubt that Goethe was an extreme partisan of similar views, as shown in the Introduction to a work written in 1794 and 1795, but not published till long afterwards: he has pointedly remarked (‹Goethe als Naturforscher›, von Dr. Karl Meding, s. 34) that the future question for naturalists will be how, for instance, cattle got their horns, and not for what they are used. It is rather a singular instance of the manner in which similar views arise at about the same time, that Goethe in Germany, Dr. Darwin in England, and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (as we shall immediately see) in France, came to the same conclusion on the origin of species, in the years 1794-5.

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[]  C h.  D a r w i n,  ‹T h e  O r i g i n  o f  S p e c i e s›,  J o h n  M u r r a y,  1 8 7 2⁶.
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