STUDENT LIFE AND BOTANICAL CAREER
The profession of arms had not led Lamarck to forget the principles of
physical science which he had received at college. During his sojourn at
Monaco the singular vegetation of that rocky country had attracted his
attention, and Chomel's _Traité des Plantes usuelles_ accidentally
falling into his hands had given him some smattering of botany.
Lodged at Paris, as he has himself said, in a room much higher up than
he could have wished, the clouds, almost the only objects to be seen
from his windows, interested him by their ever-changing shapes, and
inspired in him his first ideas of meteorology. There were not wanting
other objects to excite interest in a mind which had always been
remarkably active and original. He then realized, to quote from his
biographer, Cuvier, what Voltaire said of Condorcet, that solid enduring
discoveries can shed a lustre quite different from that of a commander
of a company of infantry. He resolved to study some profession. This
last resolution was but little less courageous than the first. Reduced
to a pension (_pension alimentaire_) of only 400 francs a year, he
attempted to study medicine, and while waiting until he had the time to
give to the necessary studies, he worked in the dreary office of a
bank.
The meditations, the thoughts and aspirations of a contemplative nature
like his, in his hours of work or leisure, in some degree consoled the
budding philosopher during this period of uncongenial labor, and when he
did have an opportunity of communicating his ideas to his friends, of
discussing them, of defending them against objection, the hardships of
his workaday life were for the time forgotten. In his ardor for science
all the uncongenial experiences of his life as a bank clerk vanished.
Like many another rising genius in art, literature, or science, his zeal
for knowledge and investigation in those days of grinding poverty fed
the fires of his genius, and this was the light which throughout his
long poverty-stricken life shed a golden lustre on his toilsome
existence. He did not then know that the great Linné, the father of the
science he was to illuminate and so greatly to expand, also began life
in extreme poverty, and eked out his scanty livelihood by mending over
again for his own use the cast-off shoes of his fellow-students.
(Cuvier.)
Bourguin[10] tells us that Lamarck's medical course lasted four years,
and this period of severe study--for he must have made it
such--evidently laid the best possible foundation that Paris could then
afford for his after studies. He seems, however, to have wavered in his
intentions of making medicine his life work, for he possessed a decided
taste for music. His eldest brother, the Chevalier de Bazentin, strongly
opposed, and induced him to abandon this project, though not without
difficulty.
At about this time the two brothers lived in a quiet village[11] near
Paris, and there for a year they studied together science and history.
And now happened an event which proved to be the turning point, or
rather gave a new and lasting impetus to Lamarck's career and decided
his vocation in life. In one of their walks they met the philosopher and
sentimentalist, Jean Jacques Rousseau. We know little about Lamarck's
acquaintance with this genius, for all the details of his life, both in
his early and later years, are pitifully scanty. Lamarck, however, had
attended at the Jardin du Roi a botanical course, and now, having by
good fortune met Rousseau, he probably improved the acquaintance, and,
found by Rousseau to be a congenial spirit, he was soon invited to
accompany him in his herborizations.
Still more recently Professor Giard[12] has unearthed from the works of
Rousseau the following statement by him regarding species: "Est-ce qu'à
proprement parler il n'existerait point d'espèces dans la nature, mais
seulement des individus?"[13] In his _Discours sur l'Inégalité parmi les
Hommes_ is the following passage, which shows, as Giard says, that
Rousseau perfectly understood the influence of the _milieu_ and of wants
on the organism; and this brilliant writer seems to have been the first
to suggest natural selection, though only in the case of man, when he
says that the weaker in Sparta were eliminated in order that the
superior and stronger of the race might survive and be maintained.
"Accustomed from infancy to the severity of the weather and the
rigors of the seasons, trained to undergo fatigue, and obliged to
defend naked and without arms their life and their prey against
ferocious beasts, or to escape them by flight, the men acquired an
almost invariably robust temperament; the infants, bringing into the
world the strong constitution of their fathers, and strengthening
themselves by the same kind of exercise as produced it, have thus
acquired all the vigor of which the human species is capable. Nature
uses them precisely as did the law of Sparta the children of her
citizens. She rendered strong and robust those with a good
constitution, and destroyed all the others. Our societies differ in
this respect, where the state, in rendering the children burdensome
to the father, indirectly kills them before birth."[14]
Soon Lamarck abandoned not only a military career, but also music,
medicine, and the bank, and devoted himself exclusively to science. He
was now twenty-four years old, and, becoming a student of botany under
Bernard de Jussieu, for ten years gave unremitting attention to this
science, and especially to a study of the French flora.
Cuvier states that the _Flore Française_ appeared after "six months of
unremitting labor." However this may be, the results of over nine
preceding years of study, gathered together, written, and printed within
the brief period of half a year, was no hasty _tour de force_, but a
well-matured, solid work which for many years remained a standard one.
It brought him immediate fame. It appeared at a fortunate epoch. The
example of Rousseau and the general enthusiasm he inspired had made the
study of flowers very popular--"_une science à la mode_," as Cuvier
says--even among many ladies and in the world of fashion, so that the
new work of Lamarck, though published in three octavo volumes, had a
rapid success.
The preface was written by Daubenton.[15] Buffon also took much interest
in the work, opposing as it did the artificial system of Linné, for whom
he had, for other reasons, no great degree of affection. He obtained the
privilege of having the work published at the royal printing office at
the expense of the government, and the total proceeds of the sale of the
volumes were given to the author. This elaborate work at once placed
young Lamarck in the front rank of botanists, and now the first and
greatest honor of his life came to him. The young lieutenant,
disappointed in a military advancement, won his spurs in the field of
science. A place in botany had become vacant at the Academy of Sciences,
and M. de Lamarck having been presented in the second rank (_en seconde
ligne_), the ministry, a thing almost unexampled, caused him to be given
by the king, in 1779, the preference over M. Descemet, whose name was
presented before his, in the first rank, and who since then, and during
a long life, never could recover the place which he unjustly lost.[16]
"In a word, the poor officer, so neglected since the peace, obtained at
one stroke the good fortune, always very rare, and especially so at that
time, of being both the recipient of the favor of the Court and of the
public."[17]
[Illustration: LAMARCK AT THE AGE OF 35 YEARS]
The interest and affection felt for him by Buffon were of advantage to
him in another way. Desiring to have his son, whom he had planned to be
his successor as Intendant of the Royal Garden, and who had just
finished his studies, enjoy the advantage of travel in foreign lands,
Buffon proposed to Lamarck to go with him as a guide and friend; and,
not wishing him to appear as a mere teacher, he procured for him, in
1781, a commission as Royal Botanist, charged with visiting the foreign
botanical gardens and museums, and of placing them in communication with
those of Paris. His travels extended through portions of the years 1781
and 1782.
According to his own statement,[18] in pursuit of this object he
collected not only rare and interesting plants which were wanting in the
Royal Garden, but also minerals and other objects of natural history new
to the Museum. He went to Holland, Germany, Hungary, etc., visiting
universities, botanical gardens, and museums of natural history. He
examined the mines of the Hartz in Hanover, of Freyburg in Saxony, of
Chemnitz and of Cremnitz in Hungary, making there numerous observations
which he incorporated in his work on physics, and sent collections of
ores, minerals, and seeds to Paris. He also made the acquaintance of the
botanists Gleditsch at Berlin, Jacquin at Vienna, and Murray at
Göttingen. He obtained some idea of the magnificent establishments in
these countries devoted to botany, "and which," he says, "ours do not
yet approach, in spite of all that had been done for them during the
last thirty years."[19]
On his return, as he writes, he devoted all his energies and time to
research and to carrying out his great enterprises in botany; as he
stated: "Indeed, for the last ten years my works have obliged me to keep
in constant activity a great number of artists, such as draughtsmen,
engravers, and printers."[20]
But the favor of Buffon, powerful as his influence was,[21] together
with the aid of the minister, did not avail to give Lamarck a permanent
salaried position. Soon after his return from his travels, however, M.
d'Angiviller, the successor of Buffon as Intendant of the Royal Garden,
who was related to Lamarck's family, created for him the position of
keeper of the herbarium of the Royal Garden, with the paltry salary of
1,000 francs.
According to the same _État_, Lamarck had now been attached to the Royal
Garden five years. In 1789 he received as salary only 1,000 livres or
francs; in 1792 it was raised to the sum of 1,800 livres.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] _Les Grand Naturalists Français au Commencement du XIX Siècle._
[11] Was this quiet place in the region just out of Paris possibly near
Mont Valérien? He must have been about twenty-two years old when he met
Rousseau and began to study botany seriously. His _Flore Française_
appeared in 1778, when he was thirty-four years old. Rousseau, at the
end of his checkered life, from 1770 to 1778, lived in Paris. He often
botanized in the suburbs; and Mr. Morley, in his _Rousseau_, says that
"one of his greatest delights was to watch Mont Valérien in the sunset"
(p. 436). Rousseau died in Paris in 1778. That Rousseau expressed
himself vaguely in favor of evolution is stated by Isidore Geoffroy
St. Hilaire, who quotes a "_Phrase, malheureusement un peu ambiguë, qui
semble montrer, dans se grand écrivain, un partisan de plus de la
variabilité du type_." (_Résumé des Vues sur l'espèce organique_, p. 18,
Paris, 1889.) The passage is quoted in Geoffroy's _Histoire Naturelle
Générale des Règnes organiques_, ii., ch. I., p. 271. I have been unable
to verify this quotation.
[12] _Leçon d'Ouverture du Cours de l'Évolution des Êtres organisés._
Paris, 1888.
[13] _Dictionnaire des Termes de la Botanique._ Art. APHRODITE.
[14] _Discours sur l'Origine et les Fondements de l'Inégalité parmi les
Hommes._ 1754.
[15] Since 1742, the keeper and demonstrator of the Cabinet, who shared
with Thouin, the chief gardener, the care of the Royal Gardens.
Daubenton was at that time the leading anatomist of France, and after
Buffon's death he gathered around him all the scientific men who
demanded the transformation of the superannuated and incomplete Jardin
du Roi, and perhaps initiated the movement which resulted five years
later in the creation of the present Museum of Natural History. (Hamy,
_l. c._, p. 12.)
[16] De Mortillet (_Lamarck. Par un Groupe de Transformistes_, p. 11)
states that Lamarck was elected to the Academy at the age of thirty; but
as he was born in 1744, and the election took place in 1779, he must
have been thirty-five years of age.
[17] Cuvier's _Éloge_, p. viii.; also _Revue biographique de la Société
Malacologique_, p. 67.
[18] See letters to the Committee of Public Instruction.
[19] Cuvier's _Éloge_, p. viii; also Bourguignat in _Revue biog. Soc.
Malacologique_, p. 67.
[20] He received no remuneration for this service. As was afterwards
stated in the National Archives, _État des personnes attachées au Muséum
National d'Histoire Naturelle a l'époque du messidor an II de la
République_, he "sent to this establishment seeds of rare plants,
interesting minerals, and observations made during his travels in
Holland, Germany, and in France. He did not receive any compensation for
this service."
[21] "The illustrious Intendant of the Royal Garden and Cabinet had
concentrated in his hands the most varied and extensive powers. Not only
did he hold, like his predecessors, the _personnel_ of the establishment
entirely at his discretion, but he used the appropriations which were
voted to him with a very great independence. Thanks to the universal
renown which he had acquired both in science and in literature, Buffon
maintained with the men who succeeded one another in office relations
which enabled him to do almost anything he liked at the Royal Garden."
His manner to public men, as Condorcet said, was conciliatory and
tactful, and to his subordinates he was modest and unpretending.
(Professor G. T. Hamy, _Les Derniers Jours du Jardin du Roi_, etc.,
p. 3.) Buffon, after nearly fifty years of service as Intendant, died
April 16, 1788.