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 Rh was willing to champion this blind naturalist in his stand for evolution. Geoffrey St.-Hilaire was at first a follower of Buffon, but he later became convinced of the value of Lamarck's work, and even went so far in his belief as to champion Lamarck in a public debate with the great Cuvier. Despite the fact that the debate brought a certain fame to St.-Hilaire, he was judged the loser, and the affair was hailed as a great and conclusive victory for those who upheld the theory of special creation.

Although St.-Hilaire believed in the truth of organic evolution, he did not wholly agree with Lamarck. He supposed that environment—that is, surrounding conditions—determined the changes that took place in animals, and preceded some of the most modern of evolutionists by teaching that one species might arise suddenly from an earlier one, without any intermediate forms. As a result of these sudden changes, it was, said St.-Hilaire, often unnecessary to produce the "missing links" over which adverse critics made such a to-do. It Was also unnecessary to show why variations would not be wiped out before they were firmly established. According to his hypothesis, each new form was complete, and no amount of normal interbreeding with other forms would produce fertile hybrids between the two.

We now come to one of the most interesting, and most remarkable of evolutionists. Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749–1832) was an anatomist, a philosopher, and a great poet, and thus brought to the problem of organic evolution a