Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/33

Rh revolted when Darwin's book appeared. Then enthusiasm, with all its exaggerations, succeeded the first astonishment; and in a little while, a reaction taking place, innumerable investigations were begun with an activity and a curiosity which the previously received ideas were no longer capable of determining. In the first spasm of enthusiasm the great naturalist's theory was called Darwinism; at a later period, dealing less in details and generalizing more, it was called Transformism.

It must be recognized that whatever measure of confidence we put in transformism, whether we accept it in its whole extent and with all its consequences, exaggerate it, modify it, accept it with amendment, or reject it, no one can doubt that it has provoked a truly extraordinary scientific movement. Both partisans and detractors, in seeking for proofs in support of their opinion, whether demanding its secrets from embryogeny, or digging into the strata of the earth in order to interpret the remains of organized beings which they inclose; all, whatever may have been their method, ideas, opinions, or even hostility, have contributed greatly to the progress of zoölogy. Thus we are far from the period of Linnæus, when the external character was everything; and from the period of Cuvier, when the anatomical idea and the study of the exterior were the only guides of the classifier. Now we investigate the connections of beings by going back from the existing to the primitive forms, or vice versa. We try to explain the varied forms under our eyes by the aid of the laws so happily formulated by Darwin. Evolution is encountered everywhere. Whether one be a transformist or not, he must bow and acknowledge the force of the tremendous bound which the impulse given by Darwin has caused.

There are, however, as Claparède has said, "terrible children" of transformism who are more anxious to make a noise around their name than to discover the truth. We must prudently distinguish from them the conscientious students who seek long, scrupulously, and painfully for precise facts in order to deduce from them consequences that will support their theories. These surely advance science, while the others often compromise it. The one thing to oppose to exaggeration, assumption, and enthusiasm is experiment. It is as mandatory to-day as in the preceding period were the reforms which I have mentioned.

While Darwin had an immense and legitimate success, the ideas of Lamarck, who more than half a century before him taught and published the same views on the mutability of species, were long forgotten. Our illustrious compatriot has been treated rather unjustly and severely. There are whole pages in the works of Lamarck containing the theory of transformation completely developed, to which Darwin has added nothing except to confirm