'Philosophie Zoologique', by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1809)
(BV L1)
The idea of ‘use-inheritance’ championed by Butler in Life and Habit had originated in the work of the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In the Philosophie Zoologique, first published in 1809, Lamarck argued that over time species are driven towards complexity by an innate life force that causes the organs of animals and plants to change depending on their usage, just as muscles are changed by exercise. Lamarck’s belief that changes in individual organisms could be passed down generations, resulting in a species’ gradual adaptation to the environment, was termed the ‘inheritance of acquired characteristics’.
This edition of 1873 belonged to Butler, though he didn’t begin reading it until after Life and Habit was published, late in 1877. Once he had finished it, his conviction of the falsity of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was strengthened. The annotations throughout these two volumes are in Butler’s hand.