“Life, in a body whose order and state of affairs can make it manifest, is assuredly, as I have said, a real power that gives rise to numerous phenomena. This power has, however, neither goal nor intention. It can do only what it does; it is only a set of acting causes, not a particular being. I was the first to establish this truth at a time when life was still thought to be a principle, an archeia, a being of some sort.”

Système Analytique des Connaissances Positives de l'Homme (1820), as quoted in Lamarck, the Mythical Precursor: A Study of the Relations Between Science and Ideology (1982) by Madeleine Barthélemy Madaule, p. 102.

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Jean-Baptiste Lamarck 3
French naturalist 1744–1829

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