¹ This is less the case for Darwin's early views about evolution. See, for example, Gruber, Howard, Darwin on Man, New York, 1974Google Scholar; Manier, Edward, The Young Darwin and His Cultural Circle, Boston, 1978CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Swischer, Charles, ‘Charles Darwin on the Origins of Behaviour,’ Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 1967, 8, 24–43Google Scholar; and my ‘Instinct and Intelligence in British Natural Theology: Some Contributions to Darwin's Theory of the Evolution of Behaviour,’ Journal of the History of Biology, 1981, 14, 193–230.Google Scholar

² In De locis affectis (vol. 8 of Opera omnia, ed. Kühn, C., Lipsiae, 1824)Google Scholar, Galen reports that he and his associates reared in isolation a young goat, which was taken by cesarean section ‘so that it would never see the one who bore it.’ Just after removal from its mother's womb, the kid was placed in a room in which there were several bowls with different nutriments—wine, oil, honey, milk, grains, and fruits. He describes their discovery (ibid., pp. 442–3):

We observed that kid take its first steps as if it were hearing that it had legs; then, it shook off the moisture from its mother; the third thing it did was to scratch its side with its foot; next we saw it sniff each of the bowls in the room, and then from among all of these, it smelled the milk and lapped it up. And with this everyone gave a yell, seeing realized what Hippocrates had said: ‘The natures of animals are untutored.’

³ Though the terms ‘evolutionist’ and ‘evolution’ are most closely associated with views of Charles Darwin, I have used them to refer generally to theories proposing the modification of species over generations. The words ‘transformism’, ‘transmutation’, and the like are meant also to convey the same meaning. The use of ‘evolution’ in describing early nineteenth-century theories of species change might seem anachronistic, but it is not. Charles Lyell used it in referring to Lamarck's arguments ‘in favour of the fancied evolution of one species out of another.’ See Lyell, 's Principles of Geology, 3 vols., London, 1830–1833, ii, 60.Google Scholar

⁴ See my ‘The Natural Selection Model and Other Models in the Historiography of Science,’ in Scientific Inquiry and the Social Sciences, eds. Brewer, M. and Collins, B., San Francisco, 1981, 37–76.Google Scholar

⁵ For example, Bloor, David, Knowledge and Social Imagery, London, 1976.Google Scholar

⁶ I have discussed the pre-nineteenth-century debates over animal instinct and intelligence in more detail in ‘Influence of Sensationalist Tradition on Early Theories of the Evolution of Behaviour’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 1979, 40, 85–105.Google Scholar

⁷ From the resources of Aristotle's De anima, Avicenna developed a theory of instinct in Kitāb al shifā, the Sufficientiae of the Medieval translation. The distinctive and skillful behaviours of different species evinced to him that the aestimative faculty, that internal sense which detected intentiones not available in the immediate data of the external senses, was infused with a divine ‘inspiration’ (ithām, rendered by the Latin translator variously as cautela naturalis and instinctus insitus). See Van Riet, S.'s critically edited Avicenna Latinus, Liber de anima, 4.3 and 5.1, 2 vols., Leiden, 1968–1972, ii, 37, 3.Google Scholar This elaboration of Aristotelian psychology was adopted by Thomas Aquinas in Summa theologica, I, Quest. 78, art. 4, resp., Opera omnia, 41 vols., Romae, 1891, vi, 99; Francis Suarez in De anima, 3.30.n.7, Opera omnia, 28 vols., Paris 1856–1878, iii, 705; the Jesuit Fathers at Coimbra in In octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis Stagirita, prima pars, 2.9. quest., 3 et quest. 4, Coloniae, 1602, cols. 420–429; Pierre Chanet, in Considerations sur la sagresse de Charron, Paris, 1643; and Gaston Pardies, in part 2 of Discours de la connaissance des bestes, Paris, 1672. These are only the more prominent among the many thinkers who contributed to and preserved the Aristotelian interpretation of animal instinct. Reimarus, Hermann Samuel, in Allgemeine Betrachtungen über die Triebe der Theire (3rd ed., Hamburg, 1773Google Scholar; first published in 1760), and Wasmann, Erich, in Instinct und Intelligenz im Theirreich (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1897)Google Scholar became powerful representatives of the Aristotelian tradition in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Descartes discussed the theory of animal behaviour in his letter (1646) to the Marquess of Newcastle, Oeuveres de Descartes, ed. Adam, C. and Tannery, P., 13 vols., Paris, 1897–1913, iv, 573–75Google Scholar, and variously in other of his works. Descartes was followed by Dilly, Antoine, in Traitté de l'ame et de la connoissance des betes, Amsterdam, 1676Google Scholar; F. B., an anonymous Englishman, in A Letter Concerning the Soul and Knowledge of Brutes; Wherein is shewn They are Void of One, and Incapable of the Other, London, 1721Google Scholar; and a host of other disciples. Of particular interest is Thomas Willis's intelligent treatment in De anima brutorum quae hominis vitalis ac sensitiva est, 1672, in Opera omnia, ed. Blasius, Geradus, Amsterdam, 1682Google Scholar; see especially chs. 6 and 7. Lenora Rosenfield traces the development of the Cartesian conception of animals in From Beast-Machine to Man-Machine, New York, 1968.Google Scholar

⁸ Gassendi, Pierre, ‘De functionibus phantasiae,’ Physicae, 3. 2. 8. 4., in Syntagma Philosophicum, Opera omnia, 6 vols., Lugdundi, 1658, ii, 409–14.Google Scholar

⁹ In ‘Quelle est la connoissance des bestes,’ an addition to his Les characters des passions (2nd ed., Amsterdam, 1658Google Scholar; first published in 1640), Cureau de La Chambre agreed with Gassendi that just as the human understanding composes and divides, so in the beast ‘the imagination does nothing else but unite and separate images of objects which the senses furnish in order to judge what is good or bad for the animal’ (ibid., p. 544).

¹⁰ Guer, Jean-Antione, Histoire critique de l'ame des bêtes, 2 vols., Amsterdam, 1749, ii 191–92.Google Scholar

¹¹ Ibid., pp. 242–43.

¹² Buffon was convinced that uniformity in the behaviour of animals was strong ‘proof that their actions are only mechanical and purely material responses.’ See his ‘De la nature de l'homme’, 1749, Histoire naturelle, in Oeuvres complètes de Buffon (ed. Flourens, Pierre), 12 vols., Paris, 1853–1855, ii, 7.Google Scholar Etienne-Bonnot de Condillac delighted in pointing out the liabilities of mechanistic interpretations of animal behaviour. See his Traité des animaux, 1755, 1.2, Oeuvres complètes de Condillac 23 vols., Paris 1798, iii, 458–59.Google Scholar

¹³ For further discussion of the sensationalists' analysis of matter, see: Vartanian, Aram, ‘Trembley's Polyp, La Mettrie, and Eighteenth-Century French Materialism’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 1950, 11, 259–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and my ‘Influence of Sensationalist Tradition,’ loc. cit (6). In his ‘From Homme machine to Homme Sensible,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 1978, 39, 45–60Google Scholar, Sergio Maravia assumes that physiologists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries can fairly easily be distinguished into mechanists, like Descartes and Boerhaave, who regarded organic bodies as composed of innert and statically related parts, and vitalists, like Bordeu, who endowed organisms with extrinsic, vital forces. Maravia fails to emphasize that sensationalists, such as La Mettrie and Condillac took a middle road, granting non-living matter intrinsic, active powers, which would express themselves when properly organized. This latter conception measurably influenced late eighteenth-century theories of homme sensible, as will be argued below.

¹⁴ Condillac, , Traité des animaux, 1.3, op. cit (12), p. 534.Google Scholar

¹⁵ [Le Roy, Charles-George], ‘Instinct,’ Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, ed. Diderot, Denis, 17 vols., Paris, 1751–1765, viii, 796.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Le Roy, Charles-Georges, Lettres sur les animaux, new ed., Nuremberg, 1781, first published in 1768, pp. 68–69.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Even Descartes referred to ‘images’ and ‘ideas’ of animal corporeal imagination. See, for example, Descartes, , L'homme, in op. cit. (7), xi, 177.Google Scholar Thomas Willis described the cerebral dispositions determining animal instinct as ‘innate notions’ (notitia ingenita), in his De anima brutorum, op. cit. (7), p. 32. Hermann Samuel Reimarus spoke of the animal having an inborn ‘idea or image’ (eint Idee oder ein Denkbild) to guide instinctive behaviour. See Reimarus, Hermann Samuel, Abhandlungen von den vornehmsten Wahrheiten der natürlichen Religion 5th ed., Tubingen, 1782, first published in 1754, p. 405.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Réaumur, René-Antoine de, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire des insects 6 vols., Paris, 1734–1742, i, 22–23.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Condillac, , Traité des animaux, 1.3, op. cit. (12), p. 534Google Scholar; Le Roy, , op. cit. (15), pp. 73–74.Google Scholar

²⁰ Martin Staum explores the broad social implications of sensationalism in his Cabanis: Enlightenment and Medical Philosophy in the French Revolution, Princeton, 1980, especially chs. 3–8.Google Scholar See also the extensive consideration of this problem in Baker, Keith M.'s Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics, Chicago, 1975, especially chs. 4–6.Google Scholar

²¹ Antione-Louis Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836) coined the term ‘ideology’ to refer to a science of the formation, expression, and organization of ideas. The Ideologists adopted the sensationalist interpretation of ideas, and in accord with that view made systematic recommendations for social and educational reform. In addition to Destutt de Tracy, the immediate circle of Ideologues included Cabanis, the great mathematician and educational reformer Marie-Jean Caritat Marquis de Condorcet, the historian of antiquity Constantin Francois Volney (1757–1820), and the zoologist Bernard-Étienne de La Ville, Comte de Lacépède (1756–1825). This group, considerably enlarged by many other French intellectuals (e.g., Condillac, Holbach, Diderot, and Turgot), held council in the salon of Madame Helvetius in the village of Auteuil during the last two decades of the eighteenth century. For an extended account of the Ideologists and the variety of their views, see: Stein, Jay W., The Mind and the Sword, New York, 1961Google Scholar, and Staum, , op. cit. (20).Google Scholar

²² As the editors wrote in the introduction to volume 3 of the Encyclopédie, op. cit. (15), p. vi:Google Scholar

It [the Encyclopédie] will exhibit the history of the riches of our century in this area; it will do so for this age which is ignorant of this history and for ages to come, enabling them greatly to advance. These arts, inestimable monuments of human industry, will no longer have to fear being lost in oblivion; they will no longer be buried in the workshop and hidden in the hands of the artists. They will be discovered to the philosopher, and reflection will finally be able to enlighten and simplify blind practice.

²³ Cabanis, Pierre-Jean, Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme, sixième mémoire, in Oeuvres complètes de Cabanis (ed. Thurot, P. J. G.), 5 vols., Paris, 1823–1825, ii, 433.Google Scholar

²⁴ Ibid., p. 434. Compare Condorcet's similar considerations in his Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain, dixième epoque, (ed. Belaval, Yvon), Paris, 1970, p. 238Google Scholar:

But are not the physical faculties, the strength, refinement, and acuteness of the senses among those qualities whose perfection the individual is able to transmit? Observation of the several races of domestic animals should convince us of this, and we may confirm it through direct observations of the human species. And, finally, can we not hold out this same hope for the intellectual and moral faculties? May not our parents, who transmit to us the advantages and defects of their characters toward which we ourselves tend, and the distinctive features of our face and the disposition to certain physical ills, also transmit that part of their physical organization on which our intelligence, strength of mind, energy of soul and moral sensibility all depend? Is it not reasonable that education, in prefecting these qualities, influences that same organization, modifies and perfects it? Analogy, the analysis of the development of the human faculties and certain facts all seem to prove the reality of these conjectures, which again expand the bounds of our hopes.

²⁵ Cabanis, , Rapports, sixième mémoire, op. cit. (23), iii, 434.Google Scholar

²⁶ de La Mettrie, Julien Offray, L'homme Machine (ed. Vartanian, Aram), Princeton, 1960, p. 162.Google Scholar

²⁷ Reimarus, , Allgemeine Betrachtungen über die Triebe der Thiere, op. cit. (7), pp. 157–60Google Scholar; see also his Abhandlungen von der vornehmsten Wahrheiten der natürlichen Religion, op. cit. (17), p. 378.Google Scholar For an account of Reimarus intellectual development, see Jaynes, Julian and Woodward, William, ‘In the Shadow of the Enlightenment,’ Journal of the History of the Behavioural Sciences, 10, 3–15, 144–59.3.0.CO;2-J>CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁸ Reimarus, , Allgemeine Betrachtungen über die Triebe der Thiere, op. cit. (7), p. 160.Google Scholar

²⁹ Reimarus, , Abhandlungen von der vornehmsten Wahrheiten der natürlichen Religion, op. cit. (17), p. 392Google Scholar:

Everything conforms to the certain kind of life which each animal lives and for which it is determined. Give to one the size, build, and organs of another and it will not be able to lead its own kind of life; indeed it must be undone or suffer greatly.

Reimarus' idea is similar to Georges Cuvier's key methodological principle, which is discussed below. Cuvier was a friend of Reimarus' son, J. A. H. Reimarus, who edited his father's works. For a description of the proto-evolutionary ideas of La Mettrie, Maupertuis, and Buffon, see Glass, Bentley, ed., Forerunners of Darwin, Baltimore, 1968, chs. 3–5.Google Scholar

³⁰ Prior to formulating his principle of natural selection, Charles Darwin had developed a habit-instinct mechanism of adaptive change in organisms. He believed that as the environment changed an animal would acquire new adaptive habits, which over generations would become instinctive, that is, innately determined. These instincts, in time, would slowly alter the anatomical structure of animals, producing heritable changes in offspring. In working out his early theory, Darwin displayed clear debts to his grandfather, Lamarck, and Frédéric Cuvier. The evidence is less certain regarding Cabanis. I have described Darwin's early theory in my ‘Instinct and Intelligence in British Natural Theology: Some Contributions to Darwin's Theory of the Evolution of Behaviour,’ loc. cit. (2).

³¹ Darwin, Erasmus, Zoonomia; or the Laws of Organic Life, 2nd ed., 2 vols., London, 1796CrossRefGoogle Scholar (first published in 1794), i. 1. (The second edition does not differ essentially from the first.)

³² Darwin discusses these topics in chpaters 16 and 39 of ibid.

³³ Keir's letter is quoted in King-Hele, Desmond, Doctor of Revolution: the Life and Genius of Erasmus Darwin, London, 1977, pp. 30–31.Google Scholar

³⁴ von Haller, Albrecht, First Lines of Physiology, notes by Wrisberg, H. A., trans, of 4th German ed., Edinburgh, 1786, p. 231–33.Google ScholarHaller, 's Primae lineae physiologiae in usum praelectionum academicarum was first published in Göttingen, 1747.Google Scholar

³⁵ Darwin, , Zoonomia, op. cit. (31) 9. 7., vol. 1, p. 320.Google Scholar

³⁶ Ibid., 6. 1, pp. 34–35.

³⁷ Ibid., 4. 7, p. 31.

³⁸ Descartes' animal spirits and Haller's nervous liquor were essentially inert, material fluids governed by the laws of mechanics. But in Darwin's theory, animal contraction, which is immediately caused by the fluid spirit of animation, ‘is governed by laws of its own, and not by those of mechanics, chemistry, magnetism, or electricty’ (ibid., 12. 1, p. 65).

³⁹ Ibid., 16. 17, p. 188.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 15. 3, pp. 132–33.

⁴¹ Ibid., 16. 17, p. 188.

⁴² Ibid., 16. 1, p. 137. There are two theories of instinct to which Darwin was possibly referring, David Hartley's or Hermann Samuel Reimarus', or both. Hartley, , in Observations on Man, 2 vols., London, 1749, i, 412Google Scholar, associated his view with the mechanical theory of Descartes and defined instinct as ‘a Kind of Inspiration to Brutes, mixing itself with, and helping out, that Part of their Faculties which corresponds to Reason in us, and which is extremely imperfect in them.’ Darwin may also have had in mind Reimarus' characterization of instinct (discussed above). Darwin no where directly refers to Reimarus, but he was a student with Reimarus' son at Edinburgh and kept a correspondence with him. Johann Albert Reimarus edited later editions of his father's works on instinct.

⁴³ Darwin, , Zoonomia, op. cit. (31), 16. 2, i, p. 138.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Ibid., 16. 16, p. 183.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 16. 11, p. 163.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 16, pp. 136–88.

⁴⁷ Ibid., 16, 13, p. 172.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 16, 13, pp. 171–73.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 16. 13, p. 177.

⁵⁰ Darwin, Charles, On the Origin of Species, London, 1859, pp. 216–219.Google Scholar

⁵¹ See note 42.

⁵² Darwin, , Zoonomia, op. cit. (31), 16. 2–3, i. pp. 138–39.Google Scholar

⁵³ Ibid., 39. 4, p. 509.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 39. 4, pp. 507–8.

⁵⁵ Ibid.

⁵⁶ Buffon, ‘De la dégénération des animaux,’ 1766Google Scholar, Histoire naturelle in Oeuvres complètes, op. cit. (12), iv, 116.Google Scholar Conway Zirkle has compiled passages from works that make use of the idea of inheritance of acquired characters. See his ‘The Early History of the Idea of the Inheritance of Acquired Characters and of Pangenesis,’ Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 1946, n.s. 35, 91–151.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Buffon, , ‘De la dégénération des animaux’Google Scholar, Histoire naturelle, in Oeuvres complètes, op. cit. (12), iv, 110–44.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Weismann, August, ‘The Supposed Transmission of Mutiliations,’ 1889, in his Essays upon Heredity (ed. and trans. Poulton, E. et al. ), 2nd ed., 2 vols., Oxford, 1891, i, 444–45.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ See my ‘Instinct and Intelligence in British Natural Theology: Some Contributions to Darwin's Theory of the Evolution of Behaviour,’ loc. cit. (2).

⁶⁰ Butler, Samuel, Evolution, Old and New, London, 1879, pp. 258–60.Google Scholar

⁶¹ See the description of Galen's experiment on animal instinct described above in note 3. This experiment was cited by Erasmus Darwin in Zoonomia, op. cit. (31), 16.6, i, p. 143Google Scholar, and by Cabanis in Rapports, second mémoire, op. cit. (23), iii, 139. Lamarck, if he did not know of Galen's experiment directly, read of it in Cabanis. As explained in note 42, Darwin undoubtedly knew of Reimarus' work. Though Cabanis and Lamarck do not cite Reimarus directly, they likely read the article on ‘Instinct’ in the Supplement à l'Encyclopédie (4 vols., Amsterdam, 1776–1777, iii, 608–11)Google Scholar, which provided a lengthy account of Reimarus' views.

⁶² Roger Hahn describes the structure of the Institut in his The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: the Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666–1803, 1971, pp. 286–312.Google Scholar

⁶³ Staum, 's Cabanis, op. cit. (20)Google Scholar, situates the French physician's ideas among those of the Ideologue circle.

⁶⁴ Roule, Louis, Lamarck et l'interpretation de la nature, Paris, 1927, pp. 118–19.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Cabanis, , Rapports, dixième mémoire, op. cit. (23), iv, 249–50.Google Scholar Cabanis acknowledged that Cuvier had discovered the remains of several extinct species, which, however, led him to suspect, contrary to the view of Cuvier, that ‘many races first made their appearance in a very different form from what they are today.’

⁶⁶ Ibid., pp. 249–53.

⁶⁷ Ibid., second mémoire, iii, 160–61.

⁶⁸ Ibid., préface, iii, 11.

⁶⁹ This is the theme of Condillac's Traité des sensations 1754, op. cit. (12), iii.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Cabanis, , Rapports, second mémoire, op. cit. (23), ii, 105.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Ibid., pp. 105–6.

⁷² Ibid., p. 137.

⁷³ Ibid., dixième mémoire, iv, 294–96.

⁷⁴ Ibid., p. 307.

⁷⁵ Ibid., pp. 322–26.

⁷⁶ Ibid., pp. 317–26.

⁷⁷ Richerand, Anthelme, Nouveaux élémens de physiologie, 5th ed., 2 vols., Paris, 1811Google Scholar, first published in 1801, ii, 157. Lamarck directly cites Cabanis' Rapports and Richerand's Nouveaux éléments throughout the third part of his Philosophie zoologique, the part devoted to the psychological faculties of animals and men. In the section on instinct, however, he refers to Cabanis as the author of the theory to which he takes some exception, but he only cites Richerand's summary of Canabis' position.

⁷⁸ de Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste, Philosophie zoologique, 3. 5, 2 vols., Paris, ii, 322–23.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Cabanis, , Rapports, dixième mémoire, op. cit. (23), iv, 294–96.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Richerand, , Nouveaux élémens, op. cit. (77), ii, 157.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Cabanis, , Rapports, second mémoire, op. cit. (23), iii, 110.Google Scholar

⁸² Ibid., neuvième mémoire, iv, 146–47.

⁸³ See Buffon, 's ‘De la dégénération des animaux,’ Histoire naturelle, op. cit. (12), iv, 110–44.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Cabanis, , Rapports, neuvième mémoire, op. cit. (23) iv., 147.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Ibid.

⁸⁶ Ibid., dixième mémoire, iv, 246, n. 1. The note describing these experiments was added in the second edition of the Rapports (1805).

⁸⁷ Ibid., dixième mémoire, iv, 252.

⁸⁸ Lamarck's ‘Discours de ouverture’ of 1800 was published as the preface to his Systême des animaux san vertèbres, Paris, 1801.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Lamarck, , Philosophie zoologique, op. cit. (78), introduction, p. 364.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ de Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste, Recherches sur l'organisation des corps vivans, Paris, 1802, p. 124.Google Scholar

⁹¹ Ibid.

⁹² Julien Virey, a late critic of Lamarck (note 107 below), may have been the source for Lamarck's criterion of nervous development. In his article ‘Animal’, 1803, Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle, 36 vols., Paris, 1803–1819, i, 419–66Google Scholar, Virey distinguished animals having both a cerebral nervous system and sympathetic system (i.e., the vertebrates) from those having merely the latter (i.e., mollusks to worms), and these two groups from animals with only nervous ‘molecules’ (e.g. echinoderms and sponges).

Though Lamarck believed particular instincts and modes of thought depended on inherited nervous structures, he rejected the suggestion that actual ideas came fully formed in the neonate. He was strongly influenced by Condillac's psychology, particularly as filtered through Cabanis and Richerand. He was consequently chary of the doctrine of innate ideas, even of the theory of innate intellectual faculties. He believed animals inherited organizational structures, like the cortex; but he contended that for these structures to yield ideas and thought, the animal had to exercise the faculties and strengthen them through use. See Lamarck, 's Philosophie zoologique, op. cit. (78), 3.7, ii, 268–69.Google Scholar

⁹³ Ibid., 3. 8, ii, 441–47.

⁹⁴ Roule, , Lamarck et l'interpretation de la nature, op. cit. (64), pp. 116–21.Google Scholar

⁹⁵ Gillispie, Charles, ‘The formation of Lamarck's Evolutionary Theory,’ Archives internationales d'historie des sciences 1956, 9, 323–38.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ Greene, John, ‘The Kuhnian Paradigm and the Darwinian Revolution in Natural History,’ in Perspective in the History of Science and Technology (ed. Roller, D.), Norman, Okla., 1971, pp. 3–25.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ Burkhardt, Richard, ‘The Inspiration of Lamarck's Belief in Evolution,’ Journal of the History of Biology, 1972 5, 413–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and his The Spirit of System, Cambridge, Mass., 1977, pp. 127–42.Google Scholar

⁹⁸ Ibid.

⁹⁹ The problems of extinction and spontaneous generation undoubtedly influenced the formulation of Lamarck's theory, as Burkhardt (ibid.) suggests. But the immediate conceptual environment against which his theory took shape surely also included notions made popular by the sensationalists—especially the idea that animals became adapted to environmental change though habit. If this latter idea is linked to the theory that alterations of animal organs are heritable, as Lamarck's mentor Buffon insisted, species evolution follows as a natural consequence. I have developed this argument a bit further in the text below.

¹⁰⁰ Lamarck's discourse, composed sometime between 1801 and 1803, has been published in Inédits de Lamarck, ed. Vachon, M., Rousseau, G., and Laissus, Y., Paris, 1972, pp. 179–65.Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ Lamarck, , Recherches, op. cit. (90), p. 105.Google Scholar

¹⁰² Lamarck, , Philosophie zoologique, op. cit. (78), 2, introduction, 1, 369–74Google Scholar; 2.3, ii, 4–19; 2.6, ii, 61–90; 3.2, ii, 235–51; and Histoire naturelle des animaux san vertèbres, 7 vols., Paris, 1815–1822, i, 177–185.Google Scholar The identification of nervous fluid with a kind of modified electrical juice was a common enough assumption (though denied by Erasmus Darwin; see note 38 above). The physiologist H. A. Wrisberg, annotator of Haller's Liniae primae physiologiae, believed the nervous fluid was of the same species as the imponderable fluids of electricity and magnetism, and claimed priority to Mesmer in this regard. See his note in von Haller, Albrecht, First Lines of Physiology, op. cit. (34), 221–22.Google Scholar Cabanis, in his Rapports, sixième mémoire, op. cit. (23), iii, 382, asserted that ‘the nervous organ is a kind of condensor, or rather a veritable reservoir of electricity.’ In the 1780s and 1790s, Lamarck himself was already proposing that the subtle fluids be identified as agents of vital activity. See Burkhardt, , The Spirit of System, op. cit. (97), pp. 63–68.Google Scholar

¹⁰³ Lamarck was a uniformitarian in geology and rejected Cuvier's assumption of general up heavals as ‘a rather convenient means for those naturalists who wish to explain everything and who do not take any trouble to observe and study the course which nature follows in regard to her productions and all that constitute her domain’ (Système de animaux sans vertèbres, op. cit. (88), p. 407).Google Scholar

¹⁰⁴ Lamarck, , ‘Discours de ouverture’ of 1800, Systême de animaux sans vertèbres, op. cit. (88), p. 13.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁵ Lamarck, , Recherches, op. cit. (90), p. 52.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁶ Lamarck, , Philosophie zoologique, op. cit. (78), 1.7, i, 221–24.Google Scholar Lamarck was not entirely consistent in elaborating his theory. In his account of the transformation of plant species, which could not employ habits, he admitted the direct effects of the environment and changed diet as agents of heritable change. In exemplifying this principle, he mentioned that altered diet could also modify animals, causing profound alterations of species (ibid., pp. 224–25).

¹⁰⁷ Julien Virey derided the hypothesis of the ‘celebrated naturalist’ as requiring that ‘the insect, the animal, and even the plant—and generally every organized body—dispose and voluntarily arrange their interior and exterior structure through a simple effect of their will, with that marvelous harmony which we find, so that they are in accord with the circumstances in which they find themselves.’ See Virey's article ‘Instinct,’ 1817, Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle, op. cit. (92), xvi, 311.Google Scholar See also Virey's Histoire des moeurs et de l'instinct des animaux, 2 vols., Paris, 1822, i, 495–96.Google Scholar I will describe Cuvier's interpretation of Lamarck's mechanism of habit in the text below.

Charles Darwin, Alfred Wallace, and even Hubert Spencer decried Lamarck's mechanism precisely on the grounds that it involved an animal's will-efforts. See Spencer, Herbert, Principles of Biology, 2 vols., New York, Appleton, 1884 (reprint of the first edition of 1864), i, 406Google Scholar; and Wallace, Alfred, ‘On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type’ (1858) reprinted in Natural Selection and Tropical Nature, London, 1891, pp. 31–32.Google Scholar In a letter to Hooker (1844), Darwin bid ‘Heaven forfend me from Lamarck's nonsense of a “tendency to progression,” “adaptations from slow willing of animals,” etc.!’ The letter is published in More Letters of Charles Darwin (ed. Darwin, F.), 2 vols., New York, 1903, i, 41.Google Scholar Darwin made similar disparaging remarks about Lamarck's ‘absurd hypothesis of will’ in his notebooks; see, for example, his First Transmutation Notebook, MS p. 21 (transcribed by Gavin de Beer), Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), Historical Series 1960, 2, 43.Google Scholar Darwin may have been overly sensitive, for his own early mechanism of evolution was not very different from Lamarck's. Virey, Cuvier, Spencer, Wallace, and Darwin are followed in supposing that Lamarck relied on animal will by: Gruber, Howard, Darwin on Man, op. cit. (2), p. 307Google Scholar; Himmelfarb, Gertrude, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, New York, 1968, p. 317Google Scholar; and Ruse, Michael, The Darwinian Revolution, Chicago, 1979, p. 7.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁸ de Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste, ‘Discours d'ouverture de 1814,’ Inédits Lamarck, op. cit. (100), p. 235Google Scholar:

It is certain and recognized that the will (la volonté) is a determination through thought, which can be exercised only when the being who wills is able not to will. That determination results from acts of intelligence, that is to say, from transactions among ideas; and in general it occurs in consequence of a comparison, of a choice, of a judgment, and always of premeditation. But as every premeditation is an employment of ideas, it supposes not only a faculty of acquiring ideas, but additionally, acts of intelligence to employ and form them.

See also, Lamarck, , Philosophie zoologique, op. cit. (78), 3. 6, ii, 330–45.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁹ Ibid, 3. 1–3, ii, 180–275.

¹¹⁰ Lamarck, , Histoire naturelle, op. cit. (102), i, 248Google Scholar:

… an action become entirely habitual, having modified the interior organization of the individual to facilitate its execution, is then so agreeable that the action becomes a need for the individual…

¹¹¹ Ibid.

¹¹² Lamarck, like Charles Darwin, was sensitive to the problem of small modifications being swamped out by one animal mating with another lacking the trait in question. He thus assumed that an acquired characteristic would only be passed on if both parents possessed it—something to be expected when both were exposed to similar environmental pressures. See Lamarck, , Philosophie zoologique, op. cit. (78), 1. 7, i, 261–62.Google Scholar

¹¹³ Lamarck's doctrine of the sentiment intérieur was elaborated in ibid., 3.4, ii, 276–301.

¹¹⁴ In Lamarck's theory, sensation occurs when a motion is excited in the fluid of a sensory nerve, transmitted to the medullary reservoir, reflected throughout the system, and then rebounds along the original nerve. For animals with a cerebral cortex, ideas arise when the nervous fluid, agitated from sensory impingements, moves to the cortex, where it leaves an impression of the object perceived and then returns to the inner feeling. The final return to inner feeling makes conscious those impressions deposited in the cortex. Lamarck discussed this theory in ibid., 3.7, ii, 374–79.

¹¹⁵ Lamarck, , Histoire naturelle, op. cit. (102), i, 267.Google Scholar

¹¹⁶ Lamarck, , Philosophie zoologique, op. cit. (78), 1.3, i, 66–67.Google Scholar

¹¹⁷ Darwin, Charles, Charles Darwin's Natural Selection, being the Second Part of his Big Species Book Written from 1856–1868 (ed. Stauffer, R.), Cambridge, 1975, ch. 10.Google Scholar

¹¹⁸ Lamarck, , ‘Discours d'ouverture de 1814,’ Inédits de Lamarck, op. cit. (100), p. 236.Google Scholar

¹¹⁹ de Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste, ‘Instinct’ (1817), Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle, op, cit. (92), xiv, 134–35.Google Scholar

¹²⁰ de Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste, ‘Habitudes’ (1817) Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle, op. cit. (92), xiv, 134–35.Google Scholar

¹²¹ Lamarck, , Philosophie zoologique, op. cit (78) 3. 7, ii, 327–29.Google Scholar

¹²² Lamarck did not deny that the higher animals often guided their instinctive tendencies by intelligent consideration, say in the adaptation of nest-construction to local conditions. See ibid., 3.5. ii, 329.

¹²³ Lamarck, , ‘Instinct,’ Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle op. cit. (92), xvi, p. 334.Google Scholar

¹²⁴ Konrad Lorenz would become convinced, just as Lamarck, that subjective needs fueled instincts in animals and distinguished instincts from simpler reflex actions. See my ‘The Innate and the Learned: the Evolution of Konrad Lorenz's Theory of Instinct,’ Philosophy of Social Sciences, 1974, 4, 111–33.Google Scholar

¹²⁵ de la Ville-sur-Illon, Bernard-Germain-Étienne, de Lacépède, Comte, Histoire naturelle des poissons, 5 vols., Paris, 1798–1803.Google Scholar

¹²⁶ Ibid., ii, 35.

¹²⁷ Camille Limoges describes the foundation and institutional evolution of the Muséum in ‘The Development of the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle of Paris,’ in The Organization of Science and Technology in France, 1808–1914 (ed. Fox, Robert and Weisz, George, Cambridge, 1980, pp. 211–40.Google Scholar

¹²⁸ The most thorough and sympathetic discussion of Geoffroy's morphology is found in Russell, E. S., Form and Function: A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology, London, 1916.Google Scholar

¹²⁹ Geoffroy presented his ‘theorie des analogues’ in the preliminary discourse to his Principes de philosophie zoologique, Paris, 1830.Google Scholar Toby Appel provides a thorough examination of the dispute between Cuvier, and Geoffroy, in ‘The Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate and the Structure of Nineteenth-Century-French Zoology,’ unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1975.Google Scholar

¹³⁰ See, for instance, Saint-Hilaire, Geoffroy, ‘Recherches sur l'organization des Gavials,’ Mémoires du Muséum d'histoire naturelle, 1825, 21, 95–155Google Scholar; and ‘Rapport fait à l'Académie royale des sciences sur un Mémoire de M. Roulin,’ Mémoires du Muséum d'histoire naturelle, 1828, 17, 201–29.Google Scholar

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¹³² The treatise was to be called ‘Sur la variete de composition des animaux.’ The first few pages of the introduction are in Fonds Cuvier, MS 65, Institut de France. William Coleman refers to this unfinished work in Georges Cuvier, Zoologist, Cambridge, 1964, p. 204, n. 1.Google Scholar

¹³³ Cuvier, Georges, Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles, 4th ed., 4 vols., Paris, 1834Google Scholar (originally published in 1812), i, 198–218. These passages do not differ from those of the first edition.

¹³⁴ Cuvier, Georges, Le règne animal, 2nd ed., 5 vols.; vols. 4 and 5 by P. A. Latrielle, Paris, 1829–1830, i, 16.Google Scholar

¹³⁵ Ibid., p. 14.

¹³⁶ Lamarck died in December, 1829. Cuvier's eulogy was read to the Académie des science in November 1832. Cuvier himself had died suddenly the previous May, so the eulogy was read by a colleague. It was published with corrections and additions by his brother Frédéric in 1835. See the fair copy of the eulogy in Fonds Cuvier, MS 3156. It was deposited by Georges Cuvier, Frédéric Cuvier's son. It carries the inscription: ‘Copie avec des corrections de mon père.’ It was published as ‘Eloge de M. De Lamarck,’ Mémoires de l'Académie des sciences, 2nd series, 1835, 13, i–xxxi.Google Scholar

¹³⁷ Ibid., p. xix.

¹³⁸ Ibid., p. xx.

¹³⁹ Cuvier developed his methodological theory of the corrolation of parts at some length in Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles, op. cit. (133), i, 176–89.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁰ Flourens, Pierre, Résumé analytique des observations de Frédéric Cuvier sur l'instinct et l'intelligence des animaux, Paris, 1841.Google Scholar Flourens' monograph went through four editions between 1841 and 1861; with each Flourens added more of his own considerations on animal psychology and its relation to human psychology.

¹⁴¹ See, for example: Stewart, Dugald, Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. 3, Philadelphia, 1827, pp. 220, 326–27Google Scholar; Lyell, Charles, Principles of Geology, op. cit. (1), ii, 38–44Google Scholar; and Darwin, Charles, On the Origin of Species, op. cit. (50), p. 208.Google Scholar

¹⁴² The letters are in Fonds Cuvier, MS 3342, Institut de France. The letters were originally deposited by Frédéric Cuvier's son.

¹⁴³ Cuvier, Frédéric, ‘Description d'un orang-outang, et observations sur ses facultes intellectuelles,’ Annales du Muséum d'histoire naturelle, 1810, 16, 65.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁴ Flourens describes Cuvier's studies of particular aniamls in his Résumé analytique, op. cit. (140), pp. 87–118.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁵ Buffon, , ‘Les orangs-outangs, ou le pongo et le jocko’ (1766), Histoire naturelle, op. cit. (12), iv, 23–38.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁶ Cuvier, F., ‘Description d'un orang-outang,’ loc. cit. (143) p. 58.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁷ Ibid., p. 62.

¹⁴⁸ Cuvier, Frédéric, ‘Instinct’ (1822), Dictionnaire des sciences naturelles, 61 vols. Strasbourg, 1816–1843, xxiii, 528–44.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁹ Ibid., p. 543.

¹⁵⁰ Cuvier, Frédéric, ‘De la sociabilite des animaux,’ Mémoires du Muséum d'histoire naturelle, 1825, 13, 1, n. 3.Google Scholar

¹⁵¹ Cuvier, F., ‘Instinct,’ op. cit. (148), p. 540.Google Scholar

¹⁵² Cuvier, Frédéric, ‘Observations sur le chien des habitans de la Nouvelle-Hollande,’ Annales du Museum d'histoire naturelle, 1808, 11, 462.Google Scholar

¹⁵³ Ibid., p. 464.

¹⁵⁴ Cuvier, Frédéric, ‘Examinen de quelques observations de M. Dugal-Stewart, qui tendent à detruire l'analogie des phenomenes de l'instinct avec ceux de l'habitude,’ Mémoires du Museum d'histoire naturelle, 1823, 12, 256–57.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁵ Cuvier, F., ‘De la sociabilite des animaux,’ loc. cit. (150), p. 27.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁶ Cuvier, Frédéric, ‘Observations preliminaires,’Google Scholar to Cuvier, Georges, Recherches sur les ossemens fossilies, op. cit. (133), i, pp. xi–xiv.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁷ Cuvier, G., Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles, op. cit. (133), i, 179.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁸ Cuvier, F., ‘Observations preliminaires,’ op. cit. ( 156), pp. xv–xvi.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁹ See note 30, above.

¹⁶⁰ For example: Spencer, Herbert, Principles of Biology, op. cit. (107), i, chs. 8–11Google Scholar; Spalding, Douglas, ‘Instinct, with Original Observations on Young Animals,’ Macmillan's Magazine, 1873, 27, 282–93Google Scholar; Haeckel, Ernst, Generelle Morphologie, vol. 2: Allgemeine Entwickelungs Geschichte der Organismen, Berlin, 1866, pp. 211–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and McDougall, William, Modern Materialism and Emergent Evolution, 2nd ed., London, 1934, pp. 153–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar