Page:Carroll Lane Fenton - A History of Evolution (1922).djvu/41

 38 observations insofar as this was possible. But when he became blind, dictating his books to his daughter in order to get them written, observation was clearly out of the question. In its stead the great naturalist was forced to rely upon the reports of other observers, and those reports were none too reliable. The obvious weakness of some of his second-hand facts reacted very unfavorably upon the whole work of Lamarck, and gave his opponents abundant weapons for their attacks upon his opinions.

But in spite of these handicaps, Lamarck did a very important work. He not only stated his own position very clearly, marshalling such facts as were at his disposal to its support; he devised a branching system of animal descent which approximated the modern "evolutionary tree" and represented far more truly than did the Aristotelian chain the true state of things. He argued strongly and clearly against the fallacious doctrine of special creations and numerous geologic catastrophes which, supposedly, annihilated all of the life on earth at the particular times of their occurrence and made a long series of new creations necessary.

Perhaps the greatest of all Lamarck's achievements was his clear statements of the problems of evolution. As one writer has said, he asked every one of the big, important questions which later evolutionists have had to answer, and by the clear phrasing of his questions, made the answers thereto the more easy.

In all France there was only one man who