De Lamarck then heard impartial voices, the anticipated echo of posterity, which would judge him as history will judge him.

Yes, the scientific world has pronounced its judgment in giving him the name of 'the French Linne,' thus linking together the two men who have both merited a triple crown by their works on general natural history, zooelogy and botany, and whose names, increasing in fame from age to age, will both be handed down to the remotest posterity."[52] Also in his _Etudes sur la Vie, les Ouvrages, et les Doctrines de Buffon_ (1838), Geoffroy again, with much warmth of affection, says: "Attacked on all sides, injured likewise by odious ridicule, Lamarck, too indignant to answer these cutting epigrams, submitted to the indignity with a sorrowful patience....

Lamarck lived a long while poor, blind, and forsaken, but not by me; I shall ever love and venerate him."[53] The following evidently heartfelt and sincere tribute to his memory, showing warm esteem and thorough respect for Lamarck, and also a confident feeling that his lasting fame was secure, is to be found in an obscure little book[54] containing satirical, humorous, but perhaps not always fair or just, characterizations and squibs concerning the professors and aid-naturalists of the Jardin des Plantes.
"What head will not be uncovered on hearing pronounced the name of the man whose genius was ignored and who languished steeped in bitterness.

Blind, poor, forgotten, he remained alone with a glory of whose extent he himself was conscious, but which only the coming ages will sanction, when shall be revealed more clearly the laws of organization.
"Lamarck, thy abandonment, sad as it was in thy old age, is better than the ephemeral glory of men who only maintain their reputation by sharing in the errors of their time.
"Honor to thee! Respect to thy memory! Thou hast died in the breach while fighting for truth, and the truth assures thee immortality." Lamarck's theoretical views were not known in Germany until many years after his death.

Had Goethe, his contemporary (1749-1832), known of them, he would undoubtedly have welcomed his speculations, have expressed his appreciation of them, and Lamarck's reputation would, in his own lifetime, have raised him from the obscurity of his later years at Paris.
Hearty appreciation, though late in the century, came from Ernst Haeckel, whose bold and suggestive works have been so widely read.