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. (I have taken
the date of the first publication of Lamarck from Isidore Geoffroy Saint-
Hilaire's ("Hist. Nat. Generale", tom. ii. page 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. pages 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 afterward; 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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