TO
DARWIN
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BOSTON 16, MASSAcHUSanS
VOLUME I OF BIOLOGICAL SERIES
FROM THE
GREEKS TO DARWIN
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE EVOLUTION
IDEA THROUGH TWENTY-FOUR CENTURIES
BY
HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN
A.B.. SC.D., PRINCETON: HON. LL.D.. TBINITT, PRINCETON. COLOMBIA UWIO.;
HON. BCD.. CAMBRIDGE; HON. D.SC. YALE. OXPORD. HEW YORK.
HON. PH.D., CHRISTIANIA (OSl6); FOB. MEMB. BOYAL SOCIBTT
RE3E.^BCH PROFEaSOB OF ZOOLOGY. COLUMBIA DNIVKB8ITT
8ENIOB GEOLOGIST, UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL BUBVEY
PRESIDENT AND CUBATCB, AMERICAS MUSEUM OF HATUBAL HtSTOBT
SECOND EDITION
BBVISED AND EXTENDED TO EMBRACE RECENT 8CH0LAB8HIP
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK ' LONDON
1929
Copyright, 1894, 1929, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Copyright, 1922. by henry FAIRFIELD OSBORN
Printed in the United States of America
Published July, 1894. Reprinted September, 1896;
December, 1899; December, 1902; November, 1905;
October, 1908; February, 1913; May, 1924. Second
edition, extended and completely revised, 1929.
6-<'
0'
TO
JAMES McCOSH
^ PRESIDENT OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
W MY REVERED TEACHER IN PHILOSOPHY
L? DURING THE YEARS 1875-1877
0^
PREFACE TO EDITION OF 1894
This volume has grown out of lectures first
delivered in Princeton in 1890, upon the period
between Buffon and Darwin, and completed in
a fuller course delivered in Columbia in 1893,
which covered also the period before Buffon.
When I began the study, my object w^as to bring
forward the many strong and true features of
pre-Darwinian Evolution, which are so gener-
ally passed over or misunderstood. When all the
materials were brought together from the earliest
times, the evidence of continuity in the develop-
ment of the idea became more clear, and to trace
these lines of development has gradually become
the central motive of these lectures. More thor-
ough research, which may, perhaps, be stimu-
lated by these outlines will, I believe, strengthen
this evidence.
I am greatly indebted to my friends Profes-
sor George Macloskie and Professor Alexander
T. Ormond for assistance and critical advice in
connection with the revision of the proofs.
H. F. O.
Columbia College, July 11th, 1894.
PREFACE TO EDITION OF 1929
The first edition of this volume, published in
1894, grew out of lectures upon the period be-
tween Buffon and Darwin, first delivered in
Princeton in 1890 and completed in a fuller in-
troductory course of biological lectures upon the
period before Buffon, extending back to the
Greeks, delivered in Columbia in 1893.
When I began the search for anticipations of
the evolution theory, my object was to bring
forward the many strong and true features of
pre-Darwinian Evolution during the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, when the idea was
gradually developing into its modern form.
Through the German historian Zeller I was led
back to the Greek natural philosophers and I
was astonished to find how many of the pro-
nounced and basic features of the Darwinian the-
ory were anticipated even as far back as the
seventh century b. c. The splendid period of
Greek biologic thought culminated in the natural
philosophy of Aristotle and included numerous
modern discoveries, not only of Darwinian but
of Lamarckian theories of causation. Since 1894<
other scholars have greatly extended the discov-
eries of Zeller, and biology is deeply indebted to
xii PREFACE TO EDITION OF 1929
D'Arcy Thompson, Charles Singer and other
commentators and translators for as full a reve-
lation of Greek biologic thought as is afforded by
the few fragments of classical literature still left
to us.
In fact, this new edition of 1929 has involved
a profound restudy of the entire twenty-four-
century period of evolutionary thought. Many
entirely new lines have been traced in the long
lineage of Ideas; previously undiscovered antici-
pations of Darwinism, especially of the descent
of man, have been unearthed; the work of cer-
tain outstanding authors has been more fully and
critically examined. Goethe, for example, in the
hght that Bielschowsky's splendid memoir, "The
Life of Goethe," throws upon him, rises to very
high rank among the precursors of Darwin. Thus
in the thirty-five years intervening since the orig-
inal volume was published, I have myself dis-
covered many additional proofs that the evolu-
tion idea is in itself a product of twenty-four
centuries of evolution, a process of ascent, of am-
plification, and of clarification of great ideas and
principles at first only dimly perceived. In this
continuous ascent or development, men of gen-
ius, culminating with Darwin, now and then
struck an entirely new creative note.
As an avocation and as a relief from my own
intensive and very difficult studies in seeking out
PREFACE TO EDITION OF 1929 xiii
the still unknown causes of Evolution^ it has been
a joy to entirely reconsider, revise, and rewrite
this volume. The original references and cita-
tions have been carefully examined, wherever
possible, and annotated. In renewing the dedi-
cation to my revered teacher in philosophy, who,
despite his rigid theological training, was among
the first to welcome the solution of the age-long
riddle of Creation, I also now dedicate this work
to the many and learned commentators on the
history of the evolution idea whose writings are
fully cited in the new bibliography at the close of
the volume.
From the Greeks to Darwin is a history of
ideas and only to a small extent a story of per-
sonalities. In Impressions of Great Naturalists,
the succeeding volume of my Biological Series, I
enter more fully into the character, personality
and education of Darwin and of a number of
great men of his period. In time I hope to add a
third volume descriptive of Darwinism up to the
present day.
Henry Fairfield Osborn.
Columbia University and
American Museum of Natural History,
February 1, 1929.
CONTENTS
CHAPTEB ^^^^
I. The Anticipation and Interpretation
OF Nature 1
Preliminary Survey— Outlines of the Whole Development from
the Greeks to Darwin— Evolution as a Law of Nature— The
Scientific Method of Interpretation— The Advance of Natu-
ral Philosophy— Advance of Geology, Zoology, Comparative
Anatomy and Palaeontology.
II. Among the Greeks 39
Conditions of Greek Thought— The Greek Perbds— lonians
and Eleatics: Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Xenophanes —
The Physicists: Heraclitus, Empedocles, Democritus, Anaxagoras
—Biological Tendencies of Early Greek Thought: Aeschylus-
Aristotle— The Post- Aristotelians: Epicurus. Lucretius, Pliny—
The Legacy of the Greeks to Later Evolution.
III. The Evolution Idea among the Theo-
logians AND Natural Philosophers . . 103
Prolonged Influence of Greek Philosophy on Theology— The
Fathers and Schoolmen: Gregory, Augustine, Erigena, Aquinas,
Roger Bacon— Arabic Science and Philosophy: Avicenna,
Avempace, Abubacer — Transition to the Literal Interpretation
of Genesis: Leonardo da Vinci, Bruno, Suarez— The Awakening
of Science— Influence of the Natural Philosophers: Francis
Bacon, Descartes, Leibnitz, Kant, Lessing, Herder, Schelling.
IV. The Evolutionists of the Eighteenth
Century ^^^
The Speculative Evolutionists: Duret, Kircher, de Maillet, de
Maupertuis, Diderot, Bonnet, Robinet, Oken— The Great Natu-
raUsts: Linnaeus, Buff on, Erasmus Darwin.
XV
yvT CONTENTS
CHAPTEB ^^°^
V. From Laimarck to St. Hilaire, Goethe
AND Naudin 219
A Question of Priority— Lamarck— Geoff roy St. Hilaire— Dis-
cussion between Cuvier and St. HUaire— Goethe— Cu\aer—
Treviranus— Bory de St. Vincent— Isidore St. Hilaire— Naudin.
VI. Darwin 301
The Evolution Theory during the First Half of the Nmeteenth
Century— The Embryologists: Meckel, von Baer, Serres— The
Followers of Buff on: Herbert, von Buch, Haldeman, Spencer—
The Progressionists: Chambers, Owen— The Selectionists: Wells,
Matthew, Wallace— State of Opinion in the Mid-Century:
Lyell— Charles Darwin— Darwin and Wallace in 1858.
Retrospect ^'^^
Bibliography ^^1
Index ^^^
THE ANTICIPATION AND INTER-
PRETATION OF NATURE
There are and can exist but two ways of investigating
and discovering truth. The one hurries on rapidly from the
senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from
them, as principles and their supposed indisputable truth,
derives and discovers the intermediate axioms. This is the
way now in use. The other constructs its axioms from the
senses and particulars by ascending continually and grad-
ually, till it finally arrives at the most general axioms, which
is the true but unattempted way.
We are wont to call that human reasoning which we ap-
ply to Nature the anticipation of Nature (as being rash
and premature), and that which is properly deduced from
things the interpretation of Nature.
— Bacon, Novum Organum,
THE ANTICIPATION AND INTER-
PRETATION OF NATURE
Preliminary Survey — Outlines of the Whole Develop-
ment from the Greeks to Darwin — Evolution as a Law of
Nature — The Scientific Method of Interpretation — The
Advance of Natural Philosophy — Advance of Geology,
Zoology, Comparative Anatomy and Palaeontology.
FRANCIS BACON in 1620 sagaciously dis-
tinguished between the anticipation and the
interpretation of Nature. Even the rash and
premature anticipations of Nature by the
Greeks, as well as by their successors, the *nat-
ural philosophers' of western Europe, have been
helpful in leading toward discovery and sounder
methods of thought. In the growth of the nu-
merous lesser ideas which have converged into
the central idea of the history of life by Evolu-
tion, we find ancient pedigrees for all that we
are likely to consider modern. Evolution has
reached its present fulness by slow additions in
twenty- four centuries. When the truths and ab-
surdities of Greek, mediaeval, and sixteenth to
nineteenth century speculation and observation
are brought together, it becomes clear that they
form a continuous whole, that the influences of
early upon later thought are greater than has
3
4 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
been believed, that Darwin owes more even to
the Greeks than we have ever recognized.
It is true that until 1858 speculation far out-
ran fact, and that the development of the evo-
lution idea was at times arrested and even retro-
gressive; yet the conviction grows with inquiry
that the universal evolution law was reached not
by any decided leap, but by the progressive de-
velopment of every subordinate idea connected
with it, until it was recognized as a whole by La-
marck and, later, by Darwin.
In order to prove this, I endeavor to trace
some of these lesser ideas back to their sources,
and to bring the comparatively little known
early evolutionists into their true relief either as
original thinkers and contributors or as mere
borrowers and imitators. This is possible only be-
cause such search has already been very ably
made among certain authors and in certain peri-
ods by other writers, to whom I am largely in-
debted for whatever success I have attained in
this first attempt to cover the whole period and
to establish the evidence of continuity.
Little national bias has been shown in the
search for anticipations of Darwin among his
precursors; as one instance, the highest praises
of Lamarck have been sounded in Germany, and
of Goethe in France. The greatest defects I find
in the historical literature of this subject are the
ANTICIPATION AND INTERPRETATION 5
lack of sense of proportion as to the original
merits of different writers and the non-apprecia-
tion of the continuity of evolution thought. In
general, we need more critical and thorough
work than has yet been given us. Many heralded
anticipations are not anticipations at all, if we
speak of Darwinism in the restricted biological
sense and not as all-embracing. Others are gen-
uine, yet they consist of speculative ideas w^hich
had been retold or rediscovered several times
over, as in the case of the principle of survival of
the fittest.
The estimates I have reached as to several of
the founders of the idea are therefore different
from those advanced by others. By considering
together all the historic stages of the develop-
ment even in a brief manner, we can trace the
continuity, the increasing momentum of the evo-
lution idea, and consequently the increasing in-
debtedness to previous suggestion. We can see
how many of the prophecies were themselves
foretold. Most obvious is the fact that Greek
speculations and suggestions were borrowed and
used over and over again in Europe as if origi-
nal, continuity in the lesser ideas which cluster
around Evolution being quite as marked as in
the main idea. To fully follow out all such ge-
netic threads would, however, require a far more
exhaustive research than this aims to be.
6 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
Apart from suggestion we meet with many re-
markable coincidences in the hnes of independent
and even simultaneous discovery, notably those
between Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck in the
transmission of acquired adaptations, between
Lamarck and Treviranus in the conception of bi-
ology as an independent branch of science, before
we reach the crowning and most exceptional case
of Darwin and Wallace. At different periods
similar facts were leading men to similar con-
clusions, and we gather many fine illustrations of
the force of unconscious induction. Means of in-
tercommunication were slow, and we should ad-
vance cautiously before concluding that any of
the greater evolutionists were dealing with bor-
rowed ideas.
Finally, I have attempted to estimate each au-
thor from his thought as a whole, before placing
him in the scales with his predecessors, contem-
poraries, and successors. When we study single
passages, we are often led widely afield. Haeckel,
for example, appears to have far overstated the
relative merits of Oken, a transcendental or
metaphysical anatomist who shines forth brightly
in certain passages, and goes under a cloud in
others, his sum total being obscure and weak.
Without sufficient consideration, Krause has
placed Erasmus Darwin over Lamarck. Huxley
has treated Treviranus and Lamarck with almost
ANTICIPATION AND INTERPRETATION 7
equal respect; they are really found to be most
unequal when tested by their approach to the
modern conception of Evolution. We must in-
quire into the sources or grounds of the conclu-
sions advanced by each writer, how far derived
from others, how far from personal observation
of Nature, and consider the soundness of each as
well as his suggestiveness and originality, before
we can judge fairly what permanent links he
may have added or welded into the chain of evo-
lutionary thought.
Outlines of the Whole Development
The history, as a whole, before Darwin, at
first sight appears to have been mainly the an-
ticipation of Nature; but closer examination re-
veals much genuine interpretation of Nature,
especially among the highly gifted Greeks, in
whom evolutionary speculation centered chiefly
around man/ As observed by Singer," the begin-
nings of scientific observation and generaliza-
tion are lost in antiquity:
. . . Where does the science of biology begin?
Again we cannot say, but we can watch its evolution
and its progress. Among the Greeks the accurate ob-
servation of living forms, which is at least one of the
^Compare Singer: Biology, and Thompson: Natural Science,
in The Legacy of Greece.
^Charles Singer: Biology. Pp. 163-4 of The Legacy of Greece.
8 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
essentials of biological science, goes back very far.
. . . The Greek people had many roots, racial, cul-
tural, and spiritual, and from them all they in-
herited various powers and qualities and derived va-
rious ideas and traditions. . . . For the earliest
biological achievements of Greek peoples we have to
rely largely on information gleaned from artistic
remains. It is true that we have a few fragments of
the works of both Ionian and Italo-Sicilian philoso-
phers, and in them we read of theoretical speculation
as to the nature of life and of the soul, and we can
thus form some idea of the first attempts of such
workers as Alcmaeon of Croton (c. 500 b. c.) to lay
bare the structure of animals by dissection.
Not until the middle of the nineteenth cen-
tury was natural science wholly equipped for
Evolution on the inductive line. The long and
tedious way of direct observation in anatomy and
palaeontology had to be paved for it; one proof
of this is found in the failure of the strong evo-
lution movement in France during the latter
part of the eighteenth and beginning of the nine-
teenth century. In the middle of the nineteenth
century came the time and the man who ranks
as the great central observer and generalizer.
Under the impetus of Darwin, the first steps
were to establish, as a natural law, what had
ranked for over two thousand years as an hy-
pothesis, not to say theory, and this has been
most thoroughly done in the last seventy years.
ANTICIPATION AND INTERPRETATION 9
We are now taking our uncertain steps in search
of the separate causes or coefficients of this law,
and cannot foresee when all of these will be dis-
covered.
^Before and after Darwin' will always be the
ante et post urbcm conditam of biological his-
tory. Before Darwin, the theory; after Darwin,
the causes.
We remember that there are usually three
stages in connection with the discovery of a law
of Nature : first, that of dim suggestion in pure
speculation or rash anticipation, with eyes closed
to facts ; second, that of clear statement as a ten-
tative or working hypothesis in an explanation
of certain facts ; and finally, the proof or demon-
stration. Darwin came in for the proof, profiting
richly by the hard struggles of his predecessors
over the first two stages. Lamarck later rose in
popular knowledge and esteem as having pro-
pounded the principle of Evolution, but among
his contemporaries and predecessors in France,
Germany, and England, we find Buffon, Eras-
mus Darwin, Goethe, Treviranus, and searching
for their inspiration, we are led back to the nat-
ural philosophers, beginning with Bacon and
ending with Herder. Among these men we find
the second birth or renaissance of the idea, and
among the Greeks its first birth.
Evolution as a natural explanation of the
10 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
origin of the higher forms of life succeeded the
old mythology and autochthony in Greece and
developed from the teachings of Thales and
Anaximander into those of Aristotle. This great
philosopher had a general conception of the
origin of higher species by descent from lower;
he framed an ascending chain of life, yet he could
not know of any actual series of organisms rising
through Evolution, such as we have suspected
from comparative anatomy and embryology and
actually witnessed in palaeontology. He also con-
sidered certain of the factors of Evolution un-
derlying the general law, and it is startling to
find him, over two thousand years ago, clearly
stating, and then rejecting, the theory of the sur-
vival of the fittest as an explanation of the evo-
lution of adaptive structures.
The Greek natural history literature, from be-
ginning to end, is a continuous source of plea-
sure and surprise. Of late it has been delight-
fully reviewed by Charles Singer, D'Arcy
Thompson and others. Amid wide differences of
opinion as to how far the Greeks actually antici-
pated later discoveries, the true conclusion is
that they anticipated many of our modern theo-
ries by suggestion; thus they carried the evolu-
tion idea well into its suggestive stage, which was
so much ground gained for those who took it up
in Europe. Greek speculations greatly hastened
ANTICIPATION AND INTERPRETATION 11
the final result, although, judged by modern
scientific standards, they arose mainly as a se-
ries of happy conjectures until the time of Aris-
totle, the first true naturalist and zoologist of
record. We know that Greek philosophy tinc-
tured early Christian theology; it is not so gen-
erally realized that the Aristotelian notion of the
gradual ascent and perfection of life led to a
scientific interpretation by Augustine and others
of the Mosaic account of the Creation.
There arose in Europe a long Greek period
in the history of the evolution idea, extending
among the Fathers of the Church and, later,
among some of the Schoolmen, as shown in their
commentaries upon Creation which accord very
closely with the modern theistic conceptions of
Evolution. If the orthodoxy of Augustine had
remained the teaching of the Church, the final
establishment of Evolution would have come
far earlier than it did, certainly during the eigh-
teenth instead of the nineteenth century, and
the bitter controversy between science and theol-
ogy over this truth of Nature would never have
arisen.
It was not until the seventeenth century that
the Jesuit Suarez and others contended that the
Book of Genesis contained a literal account of
the mode of Creation, and thereby Special Crea-
tion acquired a firm status as a scientific theory
n FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
of the history of the earth and of life in the con-
temporary philosophy and literature.
Singularly enough, Milton's epics appeared
shortly after the time of Suarez, exerting an
equally profound influence upon English Prot-
estant thought, so that Huxley has aptly termed
Special Creation 'the Miltonic hypothesis.' Thus
the opportunity of a free, unchecked develop-
ment of the evolution idea out of natural history
was lost.
During the long Middle Ages, the evolution
idea made no advance. Finally it began to ret-
rogress, when Greek natural philosophy shared
in the general suppression of the rationalistic
movement of thought of Arabic origin. Later the
hard and fast conceptions and definitions of 'spe-
cies,' developed in the rapid rise of systematic
botany and zoology by the genius of Linngeus,
were grafted upon the Mosaic account of the
Creation, establishing a 'special creation' theory
for the origin of each species. Later still, when it
was discovered in palaeontology that species of
different kinds had succeeded each other in time,
the 'special' theory was again remodeled to cover
a succession of creations extending down almost
to the present day. Thus a purely ecclesiastical
dogma developed into a pseudo-scientific theory
full of inconsistencies but fostered by ecclesias-
ticism and stoutly maintained by certain brilliant
zoologists, botanists and palaeontologists of the
ANTICIPATION AND INTERPRETATION 13
first half of the nineteenth century, such as Cu-
vier, Owen, and Agassiz.
The history of the central evolution idea be-
fore Darwin therefore follows its rise and fall as
the broad central explanation of the history of
life, w^hich we must throw into contrast with the
steady rise of the special knowledge of the lesser
ideas which center in it. As a whole, it rose among
the Greeks, declined with the decay of Greek sci-
ence, was kept alive by Greek influence in the-
ology, and fell in ecclesiastic opposition to ra-
tionalism and the age of reason. When it was
first revived in France and Germany, it was
either inspired by Greek freedom of speculation
and suggestiveness, or permeated by Greek fal-
lacies.
In the first revival the natural philosophers of
France and Germany took the lead, followed, in
the second, by a series of rashly speculative writ-
ers. Then the working and observing naturalists
took up Evolution as a biological problem. Con-
sidering the Greek movement as the first, this
was the second genuine progressive movement
toward the evolution theory ; it reached its height
with Lamarck, Geoffroy and Goethe, and then
declined, or rather failed to make a permanent
or wide-spread impression. In the middle of the
nineteenth century, all the ground gained was
apparently but not really lost; science, church,
and laity were almost at one upon the 'special
14 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
creation' theory. The open dissenters were com-
paratively few and very guarded in the expres-
sion of their opinions because Evolution had
been branded as heresy. Young Darwin was
among the few who kept before his mind both
the special creation and evolution theories; he
met and successfully overcame the great tide of
adverse opinion — a conquest which Germany has
recognized by rechristening Evolution, Darwin-
ismus. Since 1858 more works upon Evolution
have appeared each year than in all the centuries
previous.
In this more recent history we again trace the
rise and fall of certain ideas. Even our present
leaders of biologic thought have their remote
parallels in the past ; despite our present wealth
of facts, the impassable limitations of human ob-
servation and reason seem to confine us to uncon-
scious revivals of Greek conceptions. There are
many observers, but few who can strike out into
the absolutely virgin soil of novel suggestion.
The special phases of evolution development
may accordingly be marked off in the following
manner :
Greek Evolution: The Anticipation of Nature
640 B. C.-1600 A. D.
The rise, dechne, revival, and final dechne of
the Greek natural history and Greek conception
ANTICIPATION AND INTERPRETATION 15
of Evolution. Of this period were Thales, Anaxi-
mander, Anaximenes, Xenophanes, Heraclitus,
Empedocles, Democritus, Anaxagoras, Aris-
totle, Epicurus, Lucretius, Gregory, Augustine,
Bruno, Avempace, Abubacer.
Modern Evolution: The Interpretation of Nature
I. 1600-1800 A.D.
Philo.tophical Evolution
Emancipation of botany and zoology from
Greek traditions.
The beginnings of Modern Evolution as part
of a natural order of the universe. Suggestions
of inductive Evolution, as based upon the trans-
formation and filiation of species, by the natural
philosophers. Bacon, Descartes, Leibnitz, Hume,
Kant, Lessing, Herder, Schelling.
Revival of Greek Evolution ideas in specula-
tive form by such speculative philosophical writ-
ers and naturalists as Maupertuis, Diderot, De
Maillet, Robinet, Bonnet, Oken.
II. 1730-1850 A.D.
Inductive Evolution: Buff on to Geoff roy St. Hilaire and
Naudin
Rapid extension of zoology, botany and pale-
ontology. Rise and decline of inductive Evolu-
tion. Scattered observation and speculation upon
the filiation and transformation of species.
Linnseus, Buffon, E. Darwin, Lamarck,
16 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
Goethe, Treviranus, Geof. St. Hilaire, St. Vin-
cent, Is. St. Hilaire, Naudin. Miscellaneous writ-
ers: Grant, Rafinesque, Virey, Dujardin, d'Hal-
loy, Chevreul, Godron, Leidy, linger. Cams,
Lecoq, Schaaffhausen, Wolff, Meckel, von Baer,
Serres, Herbert, von Buch, Wells, Matthew,
Haldeman, Spencer, Chambers, Owen.
III. 1858-1893 A.D.
Inductive Evolution: Darwin, Wallace
Evolution established inductively and deduc-
tively as a law of Nature. The factor of natural
selection established. Observation and specula-
tion upon other factors of Evolution.
No sharp lines actually separated these four
periods ; each passed gradually into the next. The
decline of Greek, and especially of Aristotelian
influence in natural science, was extremely grad-
ual, and was overlapped by the awakening of the
spirit of original research upon animals and
plants and of the science of medicine. Similarly,
what we may call the Philosophers' period ran
insensibly into the Buffon or third period, for
the later naturalists began their work contempo-
raneously with the later philosophers. Perhaps
the sharpest transition was at the close of the
third period, in which a distinct anti-Evolution
school of geologists, zoologists and botanists had
ANTICIPATION AND INTERPRETATION 17
sprung up and succeeded in firmly entrenching
itself, so that Darwin and Wallace began the
final era with some abruptness.
Evolution as a Law of Nature
In the twenty-four centuries between Thales
and Darwin, as we have seen in this resume, the
idea had a long struggle for growth and exist-
ence, yet it never wholly suspended animation.
I may emphasize again the standpoint of these
chapters, that the final conception of Evolution
is to be regarded as a cluster of many subsidiary
ideas, which slowly evolved in the environment
of advancing human knowledge. Like an animal
or plant made up of many different parts which
have been added one by one along the ages, we
can take up this history as we should a bit of
biological research; consider the idea as living
and still growing, and seek the first stages of
each of its parts. These we wall find in the earliest
guesses as to the origin of life from lifeless mat-
ter; in conjectures about embryonic development
and reproduction; in early observed evidences of
heredity, degeneration, variation, and of the affil-
iation between organisms; in the first apprecia-
tion of environment and its influences in modi-
fying animal and plant form and function, of
internal changes in the body and their influences,
of the principle of adaptation or fitness of the
18 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
human body to certain functions, of the survival
of the fittest organisms, and finally of the sur-
vival of the fittest organs.
As each part of every organism begins as a
rudiment and follows its own independent his-
tory, so each of these subsidiary ideas of Evolu-
tion rose in a crude form and became increas-
ingly clear and definite.
We have, then, three objects in view: first, to
follow the rise of the broad idea of Evolution as
a natural law ; second, to trace back the birth and
development of each of its subsidiary ideas;
third, to keep constantly in mind the changing
environment of knowledge and prejudice. The
uncongenial influences were by no means con-
fined to those of ecclesiastic dogma; the intro-
duction and long persistence of scientific falla-
cies, such as abiogenesis, or spontaneous origin
of life, the uncertain methods of scientific think-
ing, the limited knowledge of Nature and espe-
cially of animal and plant life, are all to be con-
sidered. As these were cleared away, the intel-
lectual environment of the evolution idea be-
came more congenial, and the idea began its un-
checked development.
If we look at the idea in itself, we first dis-
tinguish between the law of Evolution as an ex-
planation of the origin and ascent of all forms
of life ; second, the evidences for such a law, and
ANTICIPATION AND INTERPRETATION 19
third, the theories and conjectures as to the nat-
ural causes or factors underlying this law or con-
stituting it.
The full conception of the law came very late.
Apparently Lamarck was the first to grasp Evo-
lution in its infinite modern significance, and to
see the analogy between the past history of life
and a great widely branching tree, having its
roots in the simplest organisms, its shorter
branches in the lower, and its longer branches in
the higher forms of life. According to this now
familiar analogy, the living animals and plants
of today are the terminal twigs of great branches
which represent the lines of extinct ancestors.
These branches united near the trunk with oth-
ers, whilst still other branches, with their termi-
nal branchlets, have entirely died out in past
time. Or, to begin at the roots and trace the his-
tory upwards instead of downwards, the lower
branches of the tree are comparatively few, and
represent the great classes of animals which di-
vided and subdivided into orders, sub-orders,
families, genera, species, and so on.
Prior to Lamarck this branching nature of de-
scent was only very crudely perceived. This was
because Aristotle's general view that the exist-
ing forms of life constituted a *scale of ascent'
from the polyps to man had been revived in dif-
ferent aspects, such as the 'perfection chain' of
20 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
Leibnitz, or the famous 'echelle des etres' of
Bonnet.
It is evident that the modern conception of
branching ascent grew out of the discovery of
the extinction of earlier and intermediate forms
of hfe such as came from palaeontology, and that
it is essentially different from the ancient 'lad-
der' or 'chain' conception, which regarded the
existing terminal twigs of the tree as directly
affiliated to each other, rather than through the
extinct earlier branches. Pre-Lamarckian Evo-
lution was mainly a conception of the gradual
rise of higher forms of life by descent and modi-
fication from lower forms still existing. This, in
contrast with the notions of sudden production
of life from the earth or of Special Creation, was
based upon slow development, and had the dis-
tinction always of being a naturalistic expla-
nation.
The variety of terms under which the law of
Evolution^ has figured marks to a certain extent
the chapters in its history. The word 'evolution'
itself was early used in the English language, in
1 Evolution [ad. L. evolution-em (recorded in the sense 'unroll-
ing of a book'), n. of action f. evolvere]. I. The process of unroll-
ing, opening out, or disengaging from an envelope. II. The opening
out or unfolding of what is wrapped up {e. g. a. roll, a bud, etc.) ;
fig. the spreading out before the mental vision (of a series of ob-
jects) ; the appearance in orderly succession of a long train of
events. Also concr. 'the series of things unfolded or unrolled'
(J.). — Murray; New English Dictionary, vol. 3, pt. 2 E.
ANTICIPATION AND INTERPRETATION 21
both poetry and prose, beginning with the poems
of H. More in 1647. This of course was not in
its modern scientific sense, although in many
instances its use closely approaches its mod-
ern significance; for example, in 1677 Hale
wrote :^
It must have potentially at least the whole Sys-
teme of Humane Nature, or at least that Ideal Prin-
ciple . . . thereof, in the evolution whereof the com-
plement and formation of the Humane Nature must
consist.
In 1791 Erasmus Darwin used^ the word in
Bonnet's (1762) embryological sense in speak-
ing of "the gradual evolution of the young ani-
mal or plant from its egg or seed." He also
thought it possible^ that the world may have been
evolved, not created.
An early use of the word in its application to
the origination of animals and plants by a process
of development from earlier forms rather than
by a process of 'special creation* was made by
Charles Lyell in 1832, paraphrasing Lamarck:*
The testacea of the ocean existed first, until some
of them by gradual evolution were improved into
those inhabiting the land.
^Prim. Oriff. Man, iii. ii. 259. Loc. cit.
^Botanic Garden^ ii. 8 note. Loc. cit.
3See p. 218.
^Principles of Geology, 1830, vol. II, p. 11.
22 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
In 1852 Herbert Spencer also used the word
in this sense. Spencer later greatly influenced the
use of the word in popular as well as technical
language, for he attributed all changes in the
universe, whether material or psychical, to only
two causes: the process of Evolution or the re-
verse process of dissolution/ In his essay of
1858^ we find him contrasting "creation by evo-
lution" with "creation by manufacture," and con-
cluding that "creation by manufacture is a much
lower thing than creation by evolution."
In England, Evolution has been known as the
'doctrine of derivation,' as the 'development hy-
pothesis,' and as the 'descent theory.' Lyell in his
Principles of Geology speaks throughout of the
theory of 'transmutation' and only once uses
the word 'evolution.' In France, the early terms
' denature e' of Buff on, ' transmutation' and 'filia-
tion' have partly given way to the more modern
HransformismeJ These terms are defined by La-
rousse^ as follows:
transmutation, changement d'une chose en une
autre,
degeneration, passage d'un etat naturel a un etat
inferieur.
gradation, accroissement ou decroissement pro-
gressif.
^Compare Murray: Evolution. New English Dictionary, vol. 3,
pt. 2 E.
^The Nebular Hypothesis. ^Larousse Universel, Paris, 1922.
ANTICIPATION AND INTERPRETATION 23
degradation, changements insensible ct continu.
denature (e), dont la nature a ete changee.
evolution, serie de transformations successives et
progressives,
filiation, lien de parente entre les parents et leurs
enfants, lorsqu'on le considere dans la per-
sonne de ces derniers.
transformation, passage d'une forme a une autre,
transformisme, doctrine biologique, suivant la-
quelle les especes animales et vegetales se
transforment et donnent naissance a de nou-
velles especes sous I'influence de I'adapta-
tion. . . .
For the first half of the nineteenth century,
Evolution was known mainly as the Xamarckian
theory,' just as later it universally became the
'Darwinian theory'; while very recently 'La-
marckism,' signifying transmission of acquired
adaptations, and 'Darwinism,' signifying adap-
tation through natural selection, have each ac-
quired special meanings, and the comprehensive
term 'Evolution' has finally come in as the per-
manent designation of the law. This embraces
more and more as our knowledge advances, so we
speak even of the first naturalistic views of the
gradual succession of species as Evolution be-
cause they contained the idea in the germ.
The Scientific Method of Interpretation
The slow discovery of scientific modes of ob-
servation and interpretation constituted the most
24 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
important feature in the intellectual environ-
ment of the evolution idea. Now working, as a
matter of course, by the observe-and-guess or the
induction-deductive method — first observing a
few facts, for a preliminary induction or 'work-
ing hypothesis' which we apply tentatively to ex-
plain certain classes of facts — we hardly appre-
ciate that this effective mental machinery is a
comparatively recent discovery. The fate of a
'working hypothesis' depends upon its applica-
tion to every single fact. When, therefore, some
obstinate or newly discovered fact compels us to
abandon one 'working hypothesis' which for a
time has not only satisfied but served us, and to
construct another, and when finally, after see-
sawing between observation and speculation, we
experience the pleasure of extracting the truth,
we have meanwhile run up an unpayable debt to
the past.
The early Greeks were mainly deductive or a
priori in their method. Aristotle, coming at a
much later period, after natural methods of in-
terpretation had been studied, understood and
taught the method of scientific induction almost
as clearly as Bacon, but he mainly practised de-
duction. This was well, for in Aristotle's period
and during his lifetime, few steps in advance
could have been made by the safer method of in-
duction, while he unquestionably promoted many
ANTICIPATION AND INTERPRETATION 25
great truths deductively. Giordano Bruno also
recommended induction to others, but found it
too tedious for his own purposes.
During the long Middle Ages, men ceased to
observe Nature; they absorbed Aristotle's views
of Nature and were anchored fast to Greek sci-
ence by a traditional reverence. ''Bornons ce
respect que nous avons pour les anciens,'' said
Pascal in his Pensees, This is also the vein of one
of Bacon's Aphorisms:^ "Again, the reverence
for antiquity, and the authority of men who have
been esteemed great in philosophy, and general
unanimity, have retarded men from advancing in
science, and almost enchanted them." Bacon also
drew a satirical picture of the condition of nat-
ural science as it was early in the seventeenth
century: "If the natural history extant, though
apparently of great bulk and variety, were to be
carefully weeded of its fables, antiquities, quota-
tions, frivolous disputes, philosophy, ornaments,
it would shrink to a slender bulk."
While Bacon (1561-1626) upheld induction
in his writings as the only true scientific method,
there is abundant evidence that it had been inde-
pendently established as the method of scientific
research by Harvey (1578-1657), who discov-
ered the circulation of the blood, by Mayo and
others, quite independently and even in advance
^Novum Organurrii Aphorisms. Book I, Ixxxiv.
26 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
of Bacon; so it is not just that he should be cred-
ited with the revival of induction as apphed to
science during the seventeenth century; he was
rather the first to formulate and teach it.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies valuable materials were slowly gathering
for the induction of Evolution, in the rising sci-
ences of geology, zoology, botany, but especially
in comparative anatomy and palaeontology. The
observational method to discover a basis of fact
for the mutability rather than fixity of species
spread so rapidly that a considerable part of the
speculations of the naturalists Buif on and Eras-
mus Darwin in the latter part of the eighteenth
century was directly based upon observation and
was true interpretation. A school that was pro-
fessedly purely observational and inductive was
established by Linnaeus and Cuvier and, owing
to the genius of these naturalists, gained such as-
cendancy that it was only after a bitter struggle
in the early part of the nineteenth century that
the discredited working hypothesis of the mu-
tability of species acquired its true place as
an instrument of thought. The evolutionists of
the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth
century contended against great odds. They up-
held a theory as to the origin of life which could
not be established inductively in the existing
state of knowledge, and which even at the time
ANTICIPATION AND INTERPRETATION 27
of the publication of the Origin of SjJCcics lacked
verification. Although for the most part devout
men, they were declared arch enemies of sound
religion, and although right in their contention
for the value of the inductive-deductive method
of thought, they were also proclaimed as the ene-
mies of sound scientific thinking.
The Advance of Natural Philosophy
The belief that the first chapter of Genesis con-
tained a revelation of scientific as well as of
spiritual and moral truth was not supported by
the most prominent of the early theologians, nor
many centuries later by Bacon. It is edifying to
read the appeals of the two great Christian phi-
losophers, Augustine and Bacon, for freedom of
scientific observation and reasoning, against the
error of searching the Scriptures for law^s of Na-
ture. Augustine says :
It very often happens that there is some question
as to the earth or the sky, or the other elements of
this world . . . respecting which one who is not a
Christian has knowledge derived from most certain
reasoning or observation [that is, a scientific man],
and it is very disgraceful and mischievous and of all
things to be carefully avoided, that a Christian,
speaking of such matters as being according to the
Christian Scriptures, should be heard by an unbe-
28 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
liever talking such nonsense that the unbeliever, per-
ceiving him to be as wide from the mark as east from
west, can hardly restrain himself from laughing.
Bacon^ in his aphorisms deplores the corrup-
tion of philosophy by the mixing up with it of
superstition and theology, saying that it is most
injurious both as a whole and in parts, and con-
tinues :
Against it we must use the greatest caution. . . .
Yet some of the moderns have indulged this folly
with such consummate inconsiderateness, that they
have endeavored to build a system of natural phi-
losophy on the first chapter of Genesis, the book of
Job, and other parts of Scripture ; seeking thus the
dead among the Hving [the interests of the soul].
And this folly is the more to be prevented and re-
strained, because not only fantastical philosophy,
but heretical religion spring from the absurd mix-
ture of matters divine and human. It is therefore
most wise soberly to render unto faith the things that
are faith's.
In the Introduction to The Great Instaura-
tion, he says :
Man, as the minister and interpreter of nature,
does and understands as much as his observations on
the order of nature, either with regard to things or
the mind, permits him, and neither knows nor is ca-
pable of more.
^Novum Organum, Book I. Sec. 65.
ANTICIPATION AND INTERPRETATION 29
A hard preliminary battle had to be fought
by the philosophers for natural causation as
against supernatural interference in the govern-
ing of the living world. Here lies the main debt
of natural science to philosophy; and to omit
mention of the great names of Descartes, Spi-
noza, Leibnitz, and Kant in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries would leave a serious gap in
these outlines. The natural philosophers of this
time were actually more scientific than the pro-
fessed scientists. They reached below metaphysics
into questions which today are left more exclu-
sively to science. The order of the universe and
the laws of Xature formed a large part of specu-
lation from the time of Bacon to that of Schel-
ling; in fact, now and again tliis speculation
sprang directly from observation of Nature, and
it is a most striking fact that every great phi-
losopher touched upon the evolution idea. Bruno
was a radical evolutionist, although his notions
were more Oriental than European. Bacon fore-
saw the close bearings of the variation of ani-
mals and plants and of experimental Evolu-
tion upon species transformation. Descartes cau-
tiously advocated the evolution idea and the
domain of natural causation. Leibnitz may even
be considered the head of a school of evolution-
ists. Kant in his earlier writings held advanced
views. Thus the early naturalists, whenever they
30 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
passed from direct observation to speculation
upon the causes of things, drew their suggestions
and inspiration largely from these great philoso-
phers.
This need not lead us into the history of the
discussion of primary causes, nor of the mechan-
ical and monistic versus the dualistic view of Na-
ture. The evolution of life as an organic law,
more complex but comparable to any inorganic
law, such as gravitation, is one phase of natural
causation. For whatever principle regulates the
rapid fall of a wounded bird to the earth is the
same in kind, so far as our philosophy of Nature
is concerned, as that which, during millions of
years, has slowly evolved the bird from the earth.
Some of the Greeks early saw this truth; yet
in the progress of later thought in Europe, the
living world was the last to come under this prin-
ciple of natural causation. The battle for it had
to be fought out first in cosmogony, then in
geology. So keen a philosopher as Kant believed
that he saw two principles in Nature ; one of nat-
ural causes reigning in lifeless matter, one of
teleological causes reigning in living matter. This
was because he could not conceive of any natural
principle which could explain the beautiful adap-
tations and designs of Nature. From geology the
spread of the truth of natural causation reached
the origin of the lower forms of life, and finally
ANTICIPATION AND INTERPRETATION 31
the origin of man. It is therefore a striking case
of parallelism that the advance of our knowledge
of development has repeated the actual cosmic
order of development. Man first perceived Evo-
lution in objects most remote, gradually in ob-
jects nearer to him, finally in himself.
Advance of Geology, Zoology, Comparative
Anatomy and Paleontology
The general state of knowledge of the differ-
ent forms of life, next to the suggestiveness of
Philosophy, was the most important factor in the
environment of the evolution idea, as food to
the organism. The comparatively elementary
knowledge of Aristotle rendered his speculations
upon Evolution, at most, happy guesses at the
truth. Embryology, palaeontology, comparative
anatomy, and geographic distribution, the four
pillars of modern evidences of Evolution, arose
in the eighteenth century, but were not built into
their scientific inductive form until the nine-
teenth century.
Yet the Greek traditions in natural history
persisted as the environment of the evolution
idea as late as the end of the eighteenth century,
and, as we shall see, the idea itself was framed
solely upon Greek speculation. Most prominent
among these Greek guesses at the truth was the
32 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
doctrine of abiogenesis, or generatio cequivoca
— the spontaneous origin of life from lifeless
matter. This fallacy exerted a most potent influ-
ence in shaping the crude theories of Evolution
which were advanced during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, the absurdity of these theo-
ries reacting unfavorably upon the true evolu-
tion idea by throwing it into discredit.
The accumulation of the natural evidences of
Evolution was the work of centuries. Besides the
advances in astronomy, geology, and physical
geography, there w^as the slow upbuilding of the
great branches of biology. First came correct
ideas of structure or comparative morphology of
animals and plants, and connected with this the
structure of extinct forms preserved as fossils;
with this knowledge developed an appreciation
of the meaning of variations and of gradual de-
velopment in structure, and the meaning of ves-
tigial or degenerate structures. Then came the
knowledge of function and the physiology, first
of man, then of the lower animals ; then the true
ideas of individual development from the egg, or
embryology, connected with which many fallacies
were current. Finally, natural environment be-
gan to be studied, or the relation of animals and
plants to each other and to the surface of the
globe, in connection with distribution. In short,
Evolution needed materials for induction. Un-
ANTICIPATION AND INTERPRETATION 33
willing Nature had to slowly yield up her secrets,
and Evolution could not be conceived in its i^hy-
letic sense until all the knowledge embraced in
'filiation' or phylogeny had been more or less
fully attained.
Let us first look at structure. Anatomy had
its infancy among the Greeks, and dissection was
rudely practised. Aristotle was descended from a
long race of physicians, yet his treatise on the
structure of man is believed to show that he did
not practise dissection. Scientific anatomy dates
back to Galen, while modern anatomy began with
the school of the University of Padua, where the
human body was first fully dissected. In struc-
ture Aristotle observed the law of analogy, as,
for example, in his comparison of the functions
of the fore and hind limbs. But the principle of
homology, or the fundamental likeness of type
structure between the fore and hind limbs, was
first pointed out by Vicq d'Azyr in 1805. Anal-
ogy is the will-o'-the-wisp of Evolution ; it is al-
ways leading us astray, as it did Geoffroy St.
Hilaire in the third period, for functionally simi-
lar forms and forms with an external resem-
blance are produced over and over again in Na-
ture, and do not always point to phyletic affin-
ity, while homolog}^ is one of our safest guides.
The relations of organs to each other, or the idea
that one structure is sacrificed for the develop-
34 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
ment of another, now known as the law of Econ-
omy of Growth, was also perceived by Aristotle,
but was first clearly stated by Goethe in 1807,
and by St. Hilaire as the principle of 'halance-
menf in 1818. Aristotle, following Democritus,
was strongly impressed with the principle of
adaptation, or the wonderful fitness of certain
structures for certain ends, and adaptation, with
all its beautiful manifestations in Nature, has al-
ways been the focus of the differences between
the Special Creationists and the Evolutionists.
Degeneration, or the gradual decline of or-
gans and structures in form and usefulness, does
not appear to have been perceived by Aristotle,
although in his analysis of "movement" he em-
ploys a very similar idea in connection with de-
velopment. We first meet with degeneration as
part of an explanation of the origin of species
in the writings of Linnaeus and Buffon in the
eighteenth century; but the idea of degeneration
itself was much older, because we find it ex-
pressed in a passage of criticism of Sylvius upon
Vesalius. Vesalius (1514-1564) had brought the
charge against Galen (131-200) that his work
could not have been founded upon the human
body, because he had described an intermaxil-
lary bone. This bone, Vesalius observed, is found
in the lower animals but not in man. Syl-
vius (1614-1672) defended Galen warmly, and
ANTICIPATION AND INTERPRETATION 35
argued that the fact that man had no intermax-
illary bone at present was no proof that he did
not have it in Galen's time. "It is luxury," he
said, "it is sensuality which has gradually de-
prived man of this bone." This passage proves
that the idea of degeneration of structure
through disuse, as well as the idea of the in-
heritance of the effects of habit, or the 'trans-
mission of acquired characters,' is a very ancient
one. It remained for Goethe to actually discover
in man a case of a free or separate intermaxil-
lary bone and give it its true philosophic inter-
pretation as proof of human descent from a more
primitive type.
Development, the antithesis of degeneration,
the increasing perfection of structure in course
of Evolution, was the central thought of Aris-
totle's natural philosophy, but the term itself, as
applied to the gradual increase in organs and sin-
gle structures in the evolutionary sense, was first
clearly used by Lamarck.
Embryonic development was rightly conceived
a priori by Aristotle in the form of epigenesis,
for he regarded the embryo as a mass of particles
containing the potential capacity of development
into the form of the adult. The term 'Evolution'
was first introduced for the embryological the-
ory as opposed to epigenesis, namely, that the
embryo contained the complete form in minia-
36 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
ture, and that development consisted merely in
the enlargement of this miniature. This doctrine
of 'emboitemenf of Bonnet, defended by Swam-
merdam, Haller, Reaumur, and Cuvier, like the
doctrine of abiogenesis, long stood in the way
of the progress of the evolution idea; for if it
were true that all beings had been preformed
from the beginning, there could naturally be no
evolution of form, nor any necessity for a the-
ory of Evolution. Long before Aristotle, the
principle of syngenesis, or formation of the em-
bryo by the union of elements from both parents,
was rightly understood by Empedocles. The no-
tion of hereditary transmission of characters was
extremely ancient, and was naturally founded
upon the early observed likeness of offspring to
parents. Aristotle also commented upon the prin-
ciples of the prepotency of the characteristics of
one parent over the other, as well as of atavism.
The growth of embryology as an objective
science came, of course, with the invention of
microscopic lenses. Degraff, in the discovery of
the ovum in 1678, Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723),
in the discovery of the spermatozoon, laid the
foundations of the science which Meckel, in 1813,
and von Baer, in 1827, built into one of the key-
stones of Evolution. Von Baer's law, that higher
animals passed through embryonic stages in
which they resemble the adult forms of lower
ANTICIPATION AND INTERPRETATION 37
types, was also dimly perceived by Aristotle, but
not, of course, in its vital relation to Evolution.
Aristotle also distinguished between living and
lifeless matter as the organic and inorganic, but
in common with all the Greeks and, in fact, with
all zoologists up to comparatively recent times,
he believed in abiogenesis, or the spontaneous de-
velopment of living from lifeless matter. This be-
lief was handed down through all the Middle
Ages, and appeared in its crudest form as an ex-
planation, not only of the origin of the lowest
forms of life, but of the higher forms, even as
late as the beginning of the nineteenth century.
As a spurious natui-alistic explanation it was one
of the greatest impediments to the growth of the
true evolution idea.
The law of biogenesis, or of life from life, was
clearly stated in Harvey's famous and oft-quoted
dictum, omne vivum eoo ovo, but was not finally
demonstrated until quite late in the nineteenth
century. The belief in spontaneous or direct
origin from the earth, even of the higher orga-
nisms like man, thus began amongst the Greeks
as an explanation of the origin of man and of the
highest forms of life ; it was gradually contracted
to the origin of the lower and smaller forms of
life and, finally, to the lowest invisible forms of
bacteria, until, as an outcome of the discussions,
which are still fresh in our memory, between
38 FROM THE GREEKS TO DAR^YIN
Pouchet and Pasteur in France, and Bastian and
Tyndall in England, the theory of spontaneous
origin of any form of life, even tlie lowest, was
completely abandoned.
II
AMONG THE GREEKS
O Glory of the Greeks ! who first didst chase
The mind's dread darkness with celestial day.
The worth illustrating of human life —
Thee, glad, I follow — with firm foot resolved
To tread the path imprinted by thy steps ;
Not urged by competition, but, alone.
Studious thy toils to copy; for, in powers,
How can the swallow with the swan contend?
Or the young kid, all tremulous of limb.
Strive with the strength, the fleetness of the horse;
Thou, sire of science ! with paternal truths
Thy sons enrichest : from thy peerless page,
Illustrious chief ! as from the flowery field
Th' industrious bee culls honey, we alike
Cull many a golden precept — golden each —
And each most worthy everlasting life.
For as the doctrines of thy godlike mind
Prove into birth how nature first uprose.
All terrors vanish; the blue walls of heaven
Fly instant — and the boundless void throughout
Teems with created things.
— Lucretius: De Rerum Natura, Book III.
AMONG THE GREEKS
Conditions of Greek Thought — The Greek Periods — The
lonians and Eleatics: Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes,
Xenophanes — The Physicists : Heraclitus, Empedocles, De-
mocritus, Anaxagoras — Biological Tendencies of Early
Greek Thought: ^schylus — Aristotle — The Post-Aristo-
telians: Epicurus, Lucretius, Pliny — The Legacy of the
Greeks to Later Evolution.
NEVER has the influence of Nature upon
thought been more evident than in the phi-
losophy and natural history of the Greeks.
Whatever they may have drawn from the vague,
abstract notions of development and transfor-
mation of Asiatic philosophers they certainly re-
east into comparatively modern evolutionism.
No landlocked people could have put forth the
rich suggestions of natural law which came from
the long line of natural philosophers from Thales
to Aristotle.
Their earliest known philosophy was a philoso-
phy of Nature, of the origin and causes of the
universe. As Zeller observes, they aimed directly
at a theory before considering the severe condi-
tions required for the attainment of scientific
knowledge. How, then, can we explain the near-
ness of their easy guesses at the secrets of Na-
ture to the results of modern labor? Only
41
42 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
through this influence of the milieu, of their
physical surrounding upon their thought. It is
in the environment of the sea that we find the
inspiration of Greek biological prophecy. Along
the shores and in the waters of the blue ^gean,
teeming with what we now know to be the earliest
and simplest forms of animals and plants, they
founded their hypotheses as to the origin and
succession of life. Lucretius the Roman was
Greek in spirit, but dwelling inland he substi-
tuted a terrestrial theory. Even the early Greek
natural philosophy sprang more or less from ob-
servation, and therefore had some concrete value.
It was not wholly imaginative.
The spirit of the Greeks was vigorous and
hopeful. Not pausing to test their theories by re-
search, they did not suffer the disappointments
and delays which come from our own efforts to
wrest truths from Nature. Combined with great
freedom and wide range of ideas, independence
of thought, and tendencies to rapid generaliza-
tion, they had genuine gifts of scientific deduc-
tion which enabled them to reach truth, as it
were, by inspiration. As a case in point, Aristotle
advanced a true theory of the nature of em-
bryonic development by a very easy process,
when contrasted with the slow steps which led to
the establishment of the same theory of epigene-
sis in the eighteenth century.
AMONG THE GREEKS
43
The Greek Periods^
GENERAL CONCEP-
TION OF NATURE
Mythological.
FiHST Period.
Naturalistic,
Earlier Materialistic,
Second Period.
Teleological.
DIVISIONS OF THE SCHOOLS
The Prehistoric Traditions.
I. The Three Earliest Schools.
The lonians. Thales (640-
546), Anaximander (611-
547), Anaximenes (588-
524), Diogenes (440- ).
The Pythagoreans. (580-
430.)
The Eleatics. Xenophanes
(576-480), Parmenides
(544- ).
II. The Physicists.
Heraclitus (535-475), Em-
pedocles (495-435), De-
mocritus (450- ), Anax-
agoras (500-428).
Socrates (470-399), Plato
(427-347).
Aristotle (384-322).
The Peripatetics, or post-
Aristotelian school, includ-
ing Theophrastus, Preaxa-
goras, Herophilus, Erasis-
tratus.
Th]
Period, A. I. The Stoics. (304-205.)
II. The Epicureans. Epicurus
Later Materialistic. (341-270), Lucretius (99-
55).
III. The Sceptics. Pyrrho (360-
270).
B. I. Eclecticism. Galen (131-
201).
lAfter Zeller: History of the Greek Philosophy.
44 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
The development of the Greeks from a child-
ish to a mature philosophy was a slow one, and
their thought upon the interpretation of Nature
passed through the above four phases as follows :
First came the prehistoric mythological phase,
which left its imprints in guesses as to the strange
origin of monstrous forms of life, by the first
natural philosophers who endeavored to replace
mythological by natural phenomena.
These pioneers contributed the spirit of the
second phase, seen in the naturalistic and earlier
materialistic schools of the pre-Socratic period,
suggesting Evolution, but neither conceiving of
Evolution by slow stages of development nor
seeking to explain Adaptation or Design in their
systems of natural causation. They could not, in
fact, speculate upon Design or teleology, as Zel-
ler very acutely observes in reply to Lange, un-
til the idea of Design as the result of a control-
ling Intelligence had arisen, and this idea was
first developed by Anaxagoras, the last of the
physicists.
Anaxagoras was followed by Socrates, who
enlarged the theistic or supernatural principle in
Design, which in the succeeding natural philoso-
phy of Plato and in the natural history of Aris-
totle inspired the third or teleological phase of
thought.
Then came the fourth phase, which was a
AMONG THE GREEKS 45
naturalistic reaction to the novel and widely op-
posed mechanical or later materialistic concep-
tions of the universe developed by the Epicu-
reans. This phase included a return to the direct
observation of Nature, especially in increased
interest in anatomy — human and comparative —
and in botany, and departure from philosophy
and speculation. This phase culminated in the
anatomy of Galen (131-201).
In Zeller's volumes on Greek philosophy and
in his special discussion of Evolution among the
Greeks, Die griechischen Vorgdnger Darwin's,
we find a full examination of the speculations of
these ancient philosophers. Lange and Haeckel
tend to read into these speculations opinions
which Zeller, with his more critical and exact
analysis, throws into their actual relative value.
Greek natural philosophers and observers were
driven to their wits' end to account for a natural
origin of man, for man was ever their chief con-
cern. Doubtless the subject was very much dis-
cussed and debated, but only a few fragments of
current hypotheses and speculations have come
down to us. All we know of the pioneers of the
earliest period — of Thales, of Anaximander, and
of others of the Ionian school — has been handed
down by later commentators.
46 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
The Ionians and Eleatics (640-480 b. c.)
Thales (640-546) and Anaximander, the
earliest Ionians, were students of astronomy and
of the origin of the universe. So far as we know,
they were the first who endeavored to substi-
tute a natural explanation of things for the old
myths. Thales was also the first of the long line
of natural philosophers who looked upon the
great expanse of mother ocean and declared
water to be the matter from which all things
arose, and out of which they exist. This idea of
the aquatic or marine origin of life, which is now
a very widely accepted theory, is therefore an
extremely ancient one. As has been said, it could
only have arisen in a country surrounded by
warm marine currents prodigal with shore and
deep sea life.
Anaooimander (611-547 B.C.)
Anaximander, the Milesian, is termed by
Haeckel the prophet of Kant and Laplace in
cosmogony, and of Lamarck and Darwin in biol-
ogy! His theories were still largely imbued with
mythology and the more closely we examine them
the less they seem to resemble modern ideas; if
we remove this superlative prophetic mantle, we
still find Anaximander imbued with a wealth of
AMONG THE GREEKS 47
suggestion and a literal prophet of some of the
eighteenth, rather than of the nineteenth, cen-
tury speculations upon Evolution.
Anaximander's volume. Concerning Nature,
irepl (fivcjeoy;, written twenty-five hundred years
before our time, "was a variant of the old tra-
ditional cosmogonies. It told of how in the be-
ginning the earth was without form and void. It
sought to trace all things back to the Infinite,
TO d-rreLpov, to That which knows no • bounds of
space or time but is before all worlds, and to
whose bosom again all things, all worlds, re-
turn."^
Anaximander conceived of the earth as first
existing in a fluid state. From its gradual dry-
ing up all living creatures were produced, begin-
ning with men. These aquatic men first appeared
in the form of fishes in the water, and they
emerged from this element only after they had
progressed so far as to be able to further de-
velop and sustain themselves upon land. This is
rather analogous to the bursting of a chrysalis
than to progressive development from a simpler
to a more advanced structure by a change of or-
gans, yet a germ of the evolution idea is found
here.
We find that Anaximander advanced some
iD'Arcy Thompson: Natural Science. P. 137 of The Legacy of
Greece.
48 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
reasons for this view. He pointed to man's long
helplessness after birth as one of the proofs that
he cannot be in his original condition. His hypo-
thetical ancestors of man were supposed to be
first encased in horny capsules, floating and feed-
ing in water ; as soon as these 'fish-men' were in a
condition to emerge, they came on land, the cap-
sule burst, and they took their human form.
Anaximander, naturally, is not restrained by the
differences of internal organization necessary for
aquatic or terrestrial life, nor are we to translate
the word /JLera^covv as 'adaptation' to new condi-
tions of life, but simply as implying that the
original fish-men persisted through their meta-
morphoses long enough to reproduce true men
on land. There is, however, the dim notion here
of survival or persistence throughout decidedly
trying circumstances, which was greatly devel-
oped later by Empedocles. In the fragments of
Anaximander's teachings we find that he does
not speculate upon the origin of other land ani-
mals, or intimate that he has any notion of the
development of higher from lower organisms, ex-
cept in the case of man. As to the origin of life
in the beginning, he was the first teacher of the
doctrine of abiogenesis, believing that eels and
other aquatic forms are directly produced from
lifeless matter.
Anaximander's explanation of the metamor-
AMONG THE GREEKS 49
phosis of 'aquatic men' into 'land men' is the first
dim adumbration of a belief in slow anatomical
transformation rather than in the immediate at-
tainment of anatomical perfection, as well as a
suggestion of the deep significance of infantile
characters as pointing back to ancestral history
— a notion which has expanded into the so-called
'biogenetic law.' This principle of the recapitula-
tion of the adaptations of our more or less re-
mote ancestors, fully expanded by Louis Agassiz,
Ernst Haeckel and others, teaches that many of
the stages of body and mind and many of the
characters of the body before birth give an ab-
breviated history of man's remotest and more im-
mediate ancestry.
Grotesque as these ideas of Anaximander's
are, they indicate a marked advance over the au-
tochthonous myths of earlier times, according to
which man grew, like a plant, directly out of the
earth; for we find here an attempt to explain
human origin upon the basis of natural analogies.
Unfortunately, so little knowledge of Anaxi-
mander's work is left us that we can obtain only
these vague glimpses of his opinions.
Anaa^imenes (588-524 b. c.)
Anaximenes, pupil of Anaximander, found in
air the cause of all things. Air, taking the form
50 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
of the soul, imparts life, motion, and thought to
animals. He introduced the idea of primordial
terrestrial shme, a mixture of earth and water,
from which, under the influence of the sun's heat,
plants, animals, and human beings were directly
produced — in the abiogenetic fashion. Diogenes
of Apollonia (440- ), a late adherent of the
Ionian school, also derived both plants and ani-
mals from this primordial earth slime. This is
the prototype of Oken's Ur-Schleim,
Xenophanes (576-480 b. c.)
Xenophanes was the founder of the Eleatic
school, and is beheved to have been a pupil of
Anaximander. He agreed with his master so far
as to trace the origin of man back to the transi-
tion period between the fluid or water and the
soHd or land stages of the development of the
earth, but we do not know how far he elaborated
his ideas. The ultimate origin of life he traced to
spontaneous generation, believing that the sun in
warming the earth produces both animals and
plants. He is famous in the annals of science as
being the first to recognize fossils as remains of
animals formerly alive, and to see in them the
proofs that the seas formerly covered the earth,
and that water was the element from which the
earth emerged. Parmenides, his pupil, devel-
AMONG THE GREEKS 51
oped his cosmogony, and also derived men from
the primitive earth shme directly engendered by
the sun's heat.
The Physicists (535-428 b. c.)
The Physicists — Heraclitus, Empedocles, De-
mocritus, and Anaxagoras — were far bolder and
more fruitful in their physiological and biologi-
cal suggestions. Among them we find that the
vague notions of animal metamorphosis and the
notions of abiogenesis derived from the lonians
were developed into surprising anticipations of
the true evolution idea.
Heraclitus (535-475 b. c.)
Heraclitus of Ephesus gave the impetus to
this advance. He was so profoundly impressed
with the ceaseless revolutions in the universe that
he saw in movement the universal law. Every-
thing was perpetually transposed into new
shapes. It must not be supposed for a moment
that Heraclitus had even a remote notion of the
transformation process of life. He was rather a
metaphysician than a natural philosopher; and
his principal contribution to the evolution idea
was manifestly in his broad view of Xature, as
involved in perpetual changes, yet always con-
stituting a uniform whole.
52 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
Empedocles (495-435 b. c.)
Empedocles of Agrigentum^ took a great
stride beyond his predecessors and may justly be
called the father of the evolution idea. He was
not only a poet and musician but he made the
first observations in embryology which are re-
corded. Among his first physical principles we
find the four elements — fire, air, water, and earth
— played upon by two ultimate forces, a combin-
ing force, or love, and a separating force, or hate.
He believed in abiogenesis, or spontaneous gen-
eration, as the explanation of the origin of life,
but that Nature does not produce the lower and
higher forms simultaneously or without an ef-
fort. Plant life came first, and animal life devel-
oped only after a long series of trials. After the
first formation of the earth, and before it was
surrounded by the sun, plants arose, and from
their budding forth came animals. But this origin
he believed to be a very gradual process, for even
now the living world presents a series, of incom-
plete products. All organisms arose through the
fortuitous play of the two great forces of Na-
ture upon the four elements. Thus animals first
appeared, not as complete individuals, but as
parts of individuals — heads without necks, arms
iThe site of modern Girgenti, Sicily.
AMONG THE GREEKS 53
without shoulders, eyes without their sockets. As
a result of the triumph of love over hate, these
j^arts hegan to seek each other and unite, but
purely fortuitously. Thus out of this confused
play of bodies arose all kinds of accidental and
extraordinary beings — animals with the heads of
men, and men with the heads of animals, even
w^ith double chests and heads like those of the
guests in the Feast of Aristophanes. But these
unnatural products soon became extinct, because
they were not capable of propagation. Here it
would appear that Empedocles was mainly en-
deavoring to give a naturalistic theory for the
origin of the centaurs, chimseras, and other cre-
ations of Greek mythology. Thus, at least, Lu-
cretius interpreted Empedocles many centuries
later, putting these conjectures into verse :^
Hence, doubtless, Earth prodigious forms at first
Gendered, of face and members most grotesque ;
Monsters half -man, half-woman, not from each
Distant, yet neither total ; shapes unsound.
Footless, and handless, void of mouth or eye.
Or from mis junction, maimed, of limb with limb:
To act all impotent, or flee from harm.
Or nurture^ take their loathsome days t'extend.
These sprang at first, and things alike uncouth;
Wn the Nature of Things. Book V, 857-99. Translation of John
Mason Good.
2, 3lt is interesting to note the remote parallel with the modern
notion of the 'struggle for existence' as, mainly, success in feed-
ing and in leaving progeny. [Reference No. 3 on p. 54.]
54 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
Yet vainly ; for abhorrent Nature quick
Checked their vile growths ; . . .
Hence, doubtless, many a tribe has sunk supprest,
Powerless its kind to gender.^ For whate'er
Feeds on the living ether, craft or speed.
Or courage stern, from age to age preserves
In ranks uninjured: . . .
Yet Centaurs lived not; nor could shapes like
these
Live ever, from two different natures reared.
Discordant limbs, and powers by powers reversed.
Empedocles imagined that after these unnat-
ural products became extinct, other forms arose
which were able to support themselves and mul-
tiply; but even these were not formed at once.
First came shapeless masses built of earth and
water, or earth slime, without limbs, organs of
reproduction, or speech, thrown from fires be-
neath the earth. Later came the separation of
the two sexes and the existing mode of reproduc-
tion. These trials of Nature were not a succes-
sion of organisms, improving as time went on,
but a series of direct births from Nature, which
were unfit to live, and hence eliminated, until,
after ceaseless trials. Nature produced the fit and
perpetual tribes.
Thus in the ancient teachings of Empedocles
we find the germ of the theory of the survival of
the fittest, or of natural selection, and the abso-
lute proof that Empedocles' crude hypothesis
AMONG THE GREEKS 55
embodied this world famous thought is found in
passages in Aristotle's Physics, in which he refers
to Empedocles as having first shown the possi-
bility of the origin of the fittest forms of life
through chance rather than through Design.
With Empedocles himself, however, it was no
more than the potential germ of suggestion,
which, in the brilliant mind of Aristotle, was
stated precisely in its modern form, as cited on
pages 74 and 85.
Lange mistakenly attributes to Democritus a
similar 'Darwinian' interpretation of Empedo-
cles' teaching, namely, the "attainment of adap-
tations through the infinitely repeated play of
production and annihilation, in which finally that
alone survives which bears the guarantee of per-
sistence through its relatively fortuitous consti-
tution." But Zeller takes a sounder and more
conservative view of the real meaning of this old
philosopher of Agrigentum. He says this could
not have been advanced by Empedocles as an
explanation of design in Nature, because the
idea of design has not yet been formulated in the
Greek mind.
Besides the 'Darwinian' notion cited by Aris-
totle from Empedocles there is a famous 'La-
marckian' passage in Empedocles which succes-
sively attracted the attention of Democritus, of
Plato, of Aristotle, and of Herbert Sj)encer ; it is
56 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
referred to by our own natural philosopher Wil-
liam Keith Brooks as follows*/
Herbert Spencer tells us that the segmentation of
the backbone is the inherited effect of fractures,
caused by bending, but Aristotle has shown (Parts
of Animals, I, i) that Empedocles and the ancient
writers err in teaching that the bendings to which
the backbone has been subjected are the cause of its
joints, since the thing to be accounted for is not the
presence of joints, but the fitness of the joints for
the needs of their possessor.
Empedocles was an evolutionist only in so far
as he taught the gradual substitution of the less
by the more perfect forms of life. He had a dim
adumbration of the truth. There is no glimmer-
ing of slow development through the successive
modification of lower into higher forms. His be-
ings, which were incapable of feeding, reproduc-
ing, or defending themselves, were all produced
spontaneously, or directly from the earth. He
thus simply modified the abiogenetic hypothesis,
and, by happy conjecture, gave his theory a sem-
blance of modern Evolution, with four sparks of
truth: first, that the development of life was a
gradual process ; second, that plants were evolved
before animals ; third, that imperfect forms were
gradually replaced (not succeeded) by perfect
1 William Keith Brooks: The Foundations of Zoology, p. 49.
AMONG THE GREEKS 57
forms ; fourth, that the natural cause of the pro-
duction of jjerfect forms was the extinction of
the imperfect.
Democritus (450- b. c.)
Democritus, the founder of the Atomistic phi-
losophy, the opponent of Design and proponent
of fortuity, chance, and law versus creative In-
tellect or Design, and the precursor of material-
ism, studied and compared the principal organs
of man and the lower animals.
A recent writer^ on Democritus denies that the
doctrine of fortuity or chance can be attributed
to Democritus; he remarks:
... As the atoms are eternal and uncaused, so is
motion ; it has its origin in a preceding motion, and
so on ad infinitum. For the Love and Hate of Em-
pedocles and the Nous (Intelligence) of Anaxago-
ras, Democritus substituted fixed and necessary laws
(not chance; that is a misrepresentation due chiefly
to Cicero) . Everything can be explained by a purely
mechanical (but not fortuitous) system, in which
there is no room for the idea of a providence or an in-
telligent cause working with a view to an end. . . .
The system of Democritus was altogether anti-
theistic. But, although he rejected the notion of a
deity taking part in the creation or government of
^Encyclopaedia Britannica, 13th edition, new form, 1926, vol. 8,
p. 4. Throughout this volume the Encyclopaedia Britannica refer-
ences are from the 13th edition, new form, 1926.
58 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
the universe, he yielded to popular prejudice so far
as to admit the existence of a class of beings, of the
same form as men, grander, composed of very subtle
atoms, less Hable to dissolution, but still mortal,
dwelling in the upper regions of air. . . .
In the verse of Lucretius^ his monistic^ phi-
losophy is expressed as follows:
But, now again to weave the tale begun,
All nature, then, as self -sustained, consists
Of twain of things : of bodies and of void
In which they're set, and where they're moved
around.
Bodies, again.
Are partly primal germs of things, and partly
Unions deriving from the primal germs.
• •«•••••
So primal germs have solid singleness.
Nor otherwise could they have been conserved
Through aeons and infinity of time
For the replenishment of wasted worlds.
Cuvier has termed Democritus the first com-
parative anatomist. He did not, as Zeller points
out, further the evolution idea, because his teach-
iLucretius: Of the Nature of Things. Book I, 418-560. Trans-
lation by William EUery Leonard.
2 Monism (from Gr. (xovos, alone), the philosophic view of the
world which holds that there is but one form of reality, whether
that be material or spiritual. . . . Haeckel's monism is mere ma-
terialism dignified by a higher title.— Enc. Brit., vol. 18, p. 722.
AMONG THE GREEKS 59
ing was not constructive in the way of advancing
explanations of natural phenomena ; it was sim-
ply destructive as regards teleology. He per-
ceived Design and admired the adaptations of
Nature, but left their origin unexplained.
He had a gift for observing the purposeful di-
rection and the functions of bodily organs, and
was in every way inclined, one would think, to
explain these adaptations upon the principles of
his mechanical philosophy, for he stood far from
a teleological conception of Nature, yet he ad-
vanced no explanations. He denied that the uni-
verse was created or ordered by reason express-
ing itself in a purposive Design. He adopted the
older views as to the origin of animals and plants
directly from the terrestrial slime. His main indi-
rect contribution to the sub-structure of Evolu-
tion was his perception of the principle of the
adaptation of single structures and organs to cer-
tain purposes — an important step in advance,
for Empedocles' notion of adaptation extended
chiefly to organisms as a whole.
Anaocagoras (500-428 b. c.)
Anaxagoras took a further step. According to
Plato and Aristotle, this philosopher was the first
to attribute adaptations in Nature to intelligent
Design, and was thus the founder of the super-
60 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
natural explanation of Nature known as Teleol-
ogy in the sense of dualism.
Anaxagoras was also the first to trace the
origin of animals and plants to pre-existing
germs in the air and ether. That the idea of De-
sign was developed in his mind only to a very
limited extent is shown in his history of the uni-
verse. All things existed, in some form, from the
beginning. There were the germs, seeds, or minia-
tures of plants, animals, and minerals inter-
mingled in the mass of matter. These germs had
to be separated from the mass and arranged un-
der the direction of mind or reason. The original
chaos was heated; it divided into cold mist and
warm ether. Water, earth, and minerals were
formed from the former. The germs of plants
were floating in the air; then they were carried
down by the rains, and produced vegetation. The
germs of animals, including those of man, were
in the ether; they were fructified by the warm
and moist terrestrial shme. In regard to Anaxag-
oras' conception of adaptations as due to intel-
ligent design in Nature, Zeller says :
The question whether the purposefulness of the
tendencies of Nature INatureinrichtung] could be
explained without a purposeful working natural
force — this question could not be raised until men
had observed adaptation in Nature and had begun
to attribute it to Intelligent Design. No one, accord-
AMONG THE GREEKS 61
ing to Aristotle and Plato, had taken this step before
Anaxagoras, But even he applied this newly discov-
ered principle in exceptional cases, — not to the
origin of life, surely, for he derived plants and ani-
mals from the air and ether. He did not, therefore,
further the explanation of the problem of design in
Nature, which Empedocles is mistakenly supposed to
have raised.
Also attributed to Anaxagoras^ is the notion
that the uses of the human hand in the various
arts have through inheritance played an impor-
tant part in human intellectual progress:
Now Anaxagoras says that it is due to his pos-
sessing hands that Man is of all things the most in-
telligent. But it may be argued that he comes into
possession of hands because of liis outstanding intel-
ligence. For hands are a tool, and Nature always
allots each tool, just as any sensible man would do, to
whosoever is able to make use of it. It is obviously
better and simpler to find a man who can play the
flute and then supply him with the instrument, rather
than to look for a man who happens to possess a
flute and then teach him to play upon it.
The formative power of mind over matter
traversed the whole philosophy of Anaxagoras
and more or less adumbrated the 'form' and 'mat-
ter' conception of Aristotle and the 'emergent'
philosophy of Lloyd Morgan of today. Living
1 Aristotle: De Partibus Animalium, p. 687a, 7.
62 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
creatures were produced from the terrestrial
slime when animated by mind, but the 'mind' of
Anaxagoras is not mind in our sense of the word.
We may credit him with seeking to give a nat-
uraHstic explanation, but not in any modern
sense was he a naturalist.
Biological Tendencies of Early Greek
Thought^
The Greeks sought natural explanations of
all origins, from the primordial atoms of Democ-
ritus to the final stages in the rise of man. All
of this intellectual curiosity and conjecture has
a very deep philosophical and racial bearing. It
lies at the very sources of Greek thought and
it partly explains the more serious anticipations
of modern biology and anatomy, and even of
anthropology, which arose among the Greeks as
early as the sixth century b. c. It classifies the
Greeks as men of the inquiring western and
northern mind and temper rather than of the
contemplative eastern or Oriental mind and tem-
per; the Greek spirit as restive, eager for new
truth, progressive, the Oriental spirit as docile,
stationary or retrogressive. The contrast between
the products of western and of eastern reason-
ing and imagination is brilliantly illustrated by a
ICompare Osborn: Man Rises to Parnassus, chap. I.
AMONG THE GREEKS 63
comparison of two great epics of the fifth cen-
tury B. c, the western Prometheus Bound and
the eastern Booh of Job. In the former, ^schy-
his, from the rising civihzation of Athens, de-
scribes man as a son of Mother Earth :
. . . and thou, earth, mother of all !
while Job, coming from the falling civilization of
Ur in Chaldea, pictures man as the very handi-
work of the Deity and constantly enjoying su-
pernatural favor.
^scliylus (525-456 b. c.)
As in the Victorian Age Darwinism was
eagerly studied and even put into verse by Ten-
nyson and Browning, so in the fifth century b. c.
^schylus, the earliest of the great Greek dram-
atists, reveals the biology and anthropology of
his day, the spirit of Empedocles and of Anaxag-
oras, in setting forth the principle of the moral,
social, intellectual and spiritual evolution of man.
^schylus thus ranks as the first poet of Evolu-
tion, to be followed by Lucretius, and by Eras-
mus Darwin, Goethe, and Tennyson.
We may permit ourselves a brief excerpt from
the splendid drama of iEschylus, Prometheus
Bound}
^Translation by T. A. Buckley, 1849, pp. 15-17.
64 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
. . . For the misfortunes that existed among mor-
tals, hear how I made them, that aforetime lived as
infants, rational and possessed of intellect. And I will
tell you, having no complaint against mankind, as
detailing the kindness of the boons which I bestowed
upon them: — they who at first seeing saw in vain,
hearing they heard not. But, like to the forms of
dreams, for a long time they used to huddle together
all things at random, and nought knew they about
brick-built and sun-ward houses, nor carpentry : but
they dwelt in the excavated earth like tiny emmets in
the sunless depths of caverns. And they had no sure
sign either of winter, or of flowery spring, or of
fruitful summer: but they used to do every thing
without judgment, until indeed I showed to them the
risings of the stars and their settings, hard to be dis-
cerned. ... In one brief sentence learn the whole
at once — All arts among the human race are from
Prometheus.
According to the above citations from the
lonians, Eleatics and Physicists, the chief influ-
ence of the advance of the science of human anat-
omy on Greek thought between 600 and 400 b. c.
was to narrow the problem of the origin of man
as a whole as conceived by Anaximander and by
Anaxagoras and his followers, to the more inti-
mate anatomical problem of the origin of cer-
tain of the more conspicuous adaptations in man,
especially those in the skeleton and in the teeth.
The idea of sudden or fortuitous development.
AMONG THE GREEKS 65
which we now call ^mutation,' still contested with
the idea of the gradual and purposive develop-
ment of useful organs. There arose numerous me-
chanical exj)lanations of bodily structures, com-
parisons between the anatomy of man and of re-
lated animals, theories of human heredity similar
to that termed 'pangenesis' by Charles Darwin,
namely, the assemblage in the germ in each gen-
eration of the hereditary forces and influences of
the parental body. Related to this rudiment of
Darwin's pangenetic theory was the wide-spread
Lamarckian notion that adaptive characters ac-
quired in the body of one generation are trans-
mitted to the germ and thus may reappear in
the body of the next generation. From the earliest
times, in the comparison of lower animals with
man, there arose discussions of the survival of
the stronger over the weaker — ^the rudiment of
the Darwinian theory of the survival of the fit-
test.
Even within the fifth century B. C. Greek
thought was becoming biological, with the prob-
lems of anatomy and the adaptations in structure
and function of the human body as centers of
speculation and research. The Greek word Bios
itself, from which the word 'biology'^ is derived,
l"The word Biology was introduced by Gottfried Reinhold
Treviranus (1776-1837) in his Biologie oder die Philosophie der
lebenden Natur, 6 vols., Gottingen, 1802-22, and was adopted by
J.-B. de Lamarck (1744-1829) in his Hydrog^ologie, Paris, 1802.
66 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
refers especially to the life of man and was not
applied by the Greeks to other living things. As
expressed by Singer*/
Greek science exhibits throughout its history a
peculiar characteristic differentiating it from the
modern scientific standpoint. Most of the work of
the Greek scientist was done in relation to man. Na-
ture interested him mainly in relation to himself.
The Greek scientific and philosophic world was an
anthropocentric world, and this comes out in the
overwhelming mass of medical as distinct from bio-
logical writings that have come down to us. Such,
too, is the sentiment expressed by the poets in their
descriptions of the animal creation :
Many wonders there be, but naught more wondrous
than man :
The light-witted birds of the air, the beasts of the
weald and the wood
He traps with his woven snare, and the brood of the
briny flood.
Master of cunning he : the savage bull, and the hart
Who roams the mountain free, are tamed by his in-
finite art.
It is probable that the first English use of the word in its modern
sense is by Sir William Lawrence (1783-1867) in his work On the
Physiology, Zoology, and Natural History of Man, London, 1819;
there are earlier English uses of the word, however, contrasted
with biography." — Singer: Biology. The fact is that Treviranus
and Lamarck proposed the word independently in the same year.
See p. 285.— H. F. O.
iCharles Singer: Biology. Pp. 167, 168; 163, 164, of The Legacy
of Greece.
AMONG THE GREEKS 67
And the shaggy rough-maned steed is broken to bear
the bit.
— Sophocles : Antigone, verses 342 ff .
Translation of F. Storr.
Inasmuch as the Egyptians were well ad-
vanced in anatomy and medicine long before the
dawn of Greek civilization, it is not surprising
that as early as the seventh century b. c. we have
records of the practice of anatomy in Greece.
Certainly at a very early date was begun the
dissection of the human body and the attribution
of physical and psychical functions to various or-
gans of the body. Thus Empedocles of Agrigen-
tum (495-435 B. c.) regarded the blood as the
seat of the "innate heat." Agrigentum (the mod-
ern Girgenti) was the centre of the Sicilian
school of medicine which gives us the first hint of
human dissection and of the comparison of the
hearts of animals w^ith that of man. The distinc-
tion of writing the first work on human anatomy
belongs to Diodes, who lived in the fourth cen-
tury B. c. This is on the testimony of the first
great anatomist in the modern sense, Galen
(130-c, 200), although we know the treatises of
Hippocrates, whose greatest activity was about
400 B. c, and those of his son-in-law Polybus On
the Nature of Man and On the Nature of Bones.
The treatise on anatomy by Herophilus is exten-
sively quoted by Galen.
68 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
Anatomy and physiology^ in the modern sense
had not advanced very far in the third century
B. c, although this was the period of the greatest
sculptural attainment of Greece. While the sci-
entific inquiry into anatomy may not have been
of great service to the sculptor in the long period
which we are considering, it was repeatedly re-
ferred to by the natural philosophers of Greece
in their attempts to explain the natural origin of
many of the most striking adaptations observable
in man; for example, the marvelous adaptive
structure of the backbone with its many vertebral
segments, the perfect adaptation of the four dif-
ferent kinds of teeth which serve for distinct pur-
poses, the perfect adaptation of the human hand
to the manifold purposes of industry and art,
finally, the intimate relation of the activity of the
hand to the activity of the mind.
Aristotle (384-322 b. c.)
With Aristotle we enter a new world. He tow-
ered above his predecessors and by the force of
his own genius created natural history, as his
predecessors had created anatomy and physiol-
ogy. In his own words, quoted by Romanes,^ we
iCompare Thompson: Natural Science, and Singer: Biology,
Medicine, in The Legacy of Greece.
2Aristotle as a Naturalist. The Contemporary Review, 1891.
AMONG THE GREEKS 69
learn that the centuries preceding him yielded
him nothing hut vague speculation:
I found no hasis prepared; no models to copy.
. . . Mine is the first step, and therefore a small
one, though worked out with much thought and hard
labour. It must be looked at as a first step, and
judged with indulgence. You, my readers or hearers
of my lectures, if you think I have done as much as
can fairly be required for an initiatory start, as
compared with more advanced departments of theory,
will acknowledge what I have achieved, and pardon
what I have left for others to accomplish.
In the Natural History of Animals are con-
tained Aristotle's views of Nature and his re-
markable observations upon the plant and animal
kingdoms. He was attracted to natural history
during his boyhood life upon the seashore, as de-
lightfully related^ by D'Arcy Thompson:
Aristotle spent two years, the happiest years per-
haps of all his life — a long honeymoon — by the sea-
side in the island of Mytilene, after he had married
the little Princess, and before he began the hard
work of his life: before he taught Alexander in
Macedon, and long before he spoke urhi et orhi in the
L^xeum. Mere it w^as that he learned the great bulk
of his natural history, in which, wide and general as
iD'Arcy Thompson: Aristotle, in The Legacy of Greece, also
Prefatory Note of his superb translation of Aristotle's Historia
Animalium.
70 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
it is, the things of the sea have from first to last a
notable predominance.
. . . Throughout the Natural History references
to places in Greece are few, while they are compara-
tively frequent to places in Macedonia and to places
on the coast of Asia Minor, all the way from the
Bosphorus to the Carian coast. I think it can be
shown that Aristotle's natural history studies were
carried on, or mainly carried on, in his middle age,
between his two periods of residence in Athens ; that
the calm, landlocked lagoon at Pyrrha was one of
his favourite hunting-grounds; and that his short
stay in Euboea, during the last days of his life, has
left little if any impress on his zoological writings.
Then it would appear that Aristotle's work in nat-
ural history was antecedent to his more strictly
philosophical work, and it would follow that we might
proceed legitimately to interpret the latter in the
light of the former. And remembering that Speusip-
pus also was a naturalist (of whose writings on fish
and shellfish Athenaeus bears abundant testimony),
we might permit ourselves to surmise that inquiries
into natural history were in no small degree to be
reckoned with as a cause of the modification of
Plato's doctrine, alike, though not identically, at the
hands of Aristotle and of the later Academy.
Aristotle undoubtedly inherited his taste for
science from the line of physicians upon his
father's side, perhaps from the Asclepiads, who
are said to have practised dissection. He was
thoroughly versed in old Greek speculative phi-
AMONG THE GREEKS 71
losophy and begins many of his treatises with a
history of opinion, after the modern German
fashion. In his Physics are found the greater part
of his interpretation of Nature and his discovery
of previous interpretations by his Greek prede-
cessors. He frequently quotes and discusses the
opinions of Empedocles, Parmenides, Democri-
tus, Herachtus, Anaxagoras, and others.
Let us first look at Aristotle's rare breadth as
a naturahst. He enters a plea for the study and
dissection of lower types: "Hence we ought not
with puerile fastidiousness to neglect the contem-
plation of more ignoble animals; for in all ani-
mals there is something to admire because in all
there is the natural and the beautiful." He dis-
tinguished five hundred species of mammals,
birds, and fishes, besides exhibiting an extensive
knowledge of polyps, sponges, cuttlefish, and
other marine forms of life. His four essays upon
the parts, locomotion, generation, and vital prin-
ciple of animals, show that he fully understood
adaptation in its modern sense ; he recognized the
analogies if not the homologies between different
organs like the limbs; he distinguished between
the homogeneous tissues made up of like parts
and the heterogeneous organs made up of unlike
parts; he perceived the underlying principle of
physiological division of labor in the different or-
gans of the body; he perceived the unity of plan
72 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
or type in certain classes of animals, and consid-
ered rudimentary organs as tokens whereby Na-
ture sustains this unity; he rightly conceived of
life as the function of the organism, not as a sep-
arate principle ; he anticipated Harvey's doctrine
of epigenesis in embryonic development ; he fully
perceived the forces of hereditary transmission,
of the prepotency of one parent or stock, and of
atavism or reversion; he saw the fundamental
difference between animals and plants, and dis-
tinguished the organic or living world from the
inorganic or lifeless world. He also perceived the
'compensation of growth' principle as shown in
a passage^ of his upon the origin of horns:
Having now explained the purpose of horns, it
remains to see the necessity of matter, by which Na-
ture gave horns to animals. . . . We see that Nature
taking away matter from the front teeth [alluding
to the ruminants] has added it to the horns.
Aristotle was familiar with both the proto-
Lamarckian and the proto-Darwinian hypothe-
ses of his predecessors. The former doctrine, now
known as adaptation through the transmission
of acquired characters, Aristotle traced back to
1 This passage does not appear in the Historia Animalium^ in
which the treatment is purely anatomical, physiological, and zo-
ological, rather than interpretative or philosophical. Aristotle's
interpretations and discussions are to be found in his Physica, in-
cluding the De Generatione. See Parts and Progressive Motions
of Animals, Book III, Chap. II.
AMONG THE GREEKS 73
Empedocles' interpretation of the segmented
structure of the backbone ; the same doctrine had
been discussed with great abihty even in the dia-
logues of Plato (427-347 B.C.). Brooks^ calls
this to our attention as follows:
Belief that something is added to our nature by
experience, and training, and education, rests on de-
liberate or unconscious acceptance of some such defi-
nition of nature as that which Alciphron gives ; and,
as the modern zoologist . . . seems to lose sight of
Eupliranor's analysis of this definition, I beg leave
to refresh his memory by a short quotation from the
old dialogue.
'^Euphranor, You seem very much taken with the
beauty of nature. Be pleased to tell me, Alciphron,
what those things are which you esteem natural^ or
by what mark I may know them.
^^Alciphron. For a thing to be natural, for in-
stance, to the mind of man, it must appear originally
therein: it must be universal in all men: it must be
invariably the same in all nations and ages. These
limitations of original, universal, and invariable ex-
clude all those notions of the human mind which are
the effect of custom and education."
Aristotle also discussed the proto-Darwinian
survival hypothesis of Empedocles and Democ-
ritus in application to the adaptive origin of the
front teeth of man — that is, the cutting or incisor
teeth and the piercing eye teeth. He rejects the
iWilliam Keith Brooks: The Foundations of Zoology, p. 62.
74 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
idea that adaptive structures such as these teeth
can be produced by survivals of accidental fitness
and substitutes the idea of purposive progress :
What, then, hinders but that the parts in Nature
may also thus arise? For instance, that the teeth
should arise from necessity, the front teeth sharp
and adapted to divide the food, the grinders broad
and adapted to breaking the food into pieces.
It may be said that they were not made for this
purpose, but that this purposive arrangement came
about by chance ; and the same reasoning is applied
to other parts of the body in which subsistence for
some purpose is apparent. And it is argued that
where all things happened as if they were made for
some purpose, being aptly united by chance, these
were preserved, but such as were not aptly made,
these were lost and still perish, according to what
Empedocles says concerning the bull species with
human heads. This, therefore, and similar reasoning,
may lead some to doubt on this subject.-^
Against the fortuitous or chance hypothesis of
Empedocles and Democritus, Aristotle advanced
his own philosophy of purposive natural causa-
tion, which we may seek to understand by a num-
ber of concrete examples from his own writings.
Unfortunately for our purpose in these chapters,
his observations were far more extended in lower
animals and in comparative anatomy than in
man.
iFor full context, see pp. 83-7.
AMONG THE GREEKS 75
In his treatise upon the Generation of Ani-
mals^ we find him discussing the heredity theo-
ries of Hippocrates and Herach'tus, which were
similar to those of Democritus, and to the later
pangenesis of Darwin.
Aristotle, however, does not accept the pan-
genesis hypothesis of heredity, nor does he sug-
gest the inheritance of normal functional modi-
fications. In his History of Animals^ he refers to
the inheritance of mutilations, remarking that
such transmission is not infrequent. He says in
effect, as to inherited mutilations:
Children resemble their parents not only in con-
genital characters, but in those acquired later in life.
For cases are known where parents have been marked
by scars, and children have shown traces of these
scars at the same points; a case is reported from
Chalcedon in which a father had been branded with
a letter, and the same letter somewhat blurred and
not sharply defined appeared upon the arm of his
child.
We can pass leniently by errors which are
strewn among such grand contributions to biol-
ogy and to the very foundation stones of the
evolution idea. Aristotle showed practical ig-
norance of human anatomy and physiology; he
failed to establish a natural classification ; he also
II, Chap. XVII.
2Book VII, Chap. VI.
76 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
fostered the abiogenetic myth, that not only
smaller but larger animals, such as frogs, snakes,
and eels, are produced spontaneously from the
mud. Some of these and many other of his mis-
taken teachings were not wholly outlived until
the nineteenth century; yet we may not allow
them to detract from our general admiration of
his great genius. His failures in descriptive sci-
ence were chiefly in statements where he departed
from his own principle of verification and relied
upon the scientific hearsay of his day.
The main bases of his ideas upon descent were
evidently drawn from his own observations upon
the gradations between marine plants and the
lower and higher forms of marine animals. He
was the first to conceive of a genetic series, and
his conception of a single chain of evolution from
the polyps to man was never fully replaced until
the beginning of the nineteenth century. It ap-
peared over and over again in different guises.
Aristotle's Interpretation of Nature
In all his philosophy and interpretation of Na-
ture, Aristotle was guided partly by his precon-
ceived opinions derived from Anaxagoras, Plato
and Socrates, and partly by convictions derived
from his own observations upon the wonderful
order and perfection of the universe. His 'per-
AMONG THE GREEKS 77
fecting principle' in Nature is only one of a score
of his legacies to later speculation upon evolu-
tion causation. Many of our modern writers are
Aristotelians without apparently being conscious
of it.
Aristotle's method in interpreting Nature has
been fully discussed in Lewes' very interesting
work, Aristotle; a Chapter in the History of
Science, While Plato had relied upon intuitions
as the main ground of true knowledge, Aristotle
relied upon experiment and induction. He held
that errors do not arise because the senses are
false media, but because we put false interpreta-
tions upon their testimony. "We must not," he
said, "accept a general principle from logic only,
but must prove its application to each fact; for
it is in facts that we must seek general princi-
ples, and these must always accord w^th facts.
Experience furnishes the particular facts from
which induction is the pathway to general laws."
Aristotle's speculations as to the origin and
succession of life went far beyond what he could
have reached by the legitimate application of his
professed method of procedure. Having now
briefly considered the materials of his knowledge,
let us carefully examine how he put his facts to-
gether into an evolution system which had the
teachings of Plato and Socrates for its primary
philosophical basis.
78 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
Aristotle believed in a complete ascending
^gradation' in Nature, a progressive development
corresponding with the progressive life of the
soul. Nature, he says, proceeds constantly by the
aid of gradual transitions from the most imper-
fect to the most perfect, while the numerous
analogies which we find in the various parts of
the animal scale show that all is governed by the
same laws — in other words. Nature is a unit as
to its causation. The lowest stage is the inor-
ganic, and this passes into the organic by direct
metamorphosis, matter being transformed into
life. Plants are animate as compared with min-
erals, and inanimate as compared with animals;
they have powers of nourishment and reproduc-
tion, but no feeling or sensibility. Then come the
plant-animals or zoophytes ; these are the marine
creatures, such as sponges and sea-anemones,
which leave the observer most in doubt, for they
grow upon rocks and die if detached. (Polyps
Aristotle wrongly thought were plants, while
sponges he rightly considered animals.) The
third step taken by Nature is the development of
animals with sensibility — hence desire for food
and other needs of life, and hence locomotion to
fulfil these desires. Here was a more complex
and energetic form of the original life. Man is
the highest point of one long and continuous as-
cent ; other animals have the faculty of thought ;
AMONG THE GREEKS 79
man alone generalizes and forms abstractions ; he
is physically superior in his erect position, in his
purest and largest blood supply, largest brain,
and highest temperature.
How was this ascending gradation effected?
Here we come to the second feature in Aris-
totle's theory, which is more or less transcenden-
tal or metaphysical — it is the idea of the devel-
opment of the potentiality of p>erfection into
actuality, the creation of form in matter, "Na-
ture does nothing without an aim." "She is al-
ways striving after the most beautiful that is
possible." Aristotle perceived a most marvelous
adaptation in the arrangement of the world and
felt compelled to assume intelligent Design as
the primary cause of things, by the perfection
and regularity which he observed in Nature.
Nothing, he held, which occurs regularly can be
the result of accident. This perfection is the out-
come of an all-pervading movement, which w^e,
in twentieth-century language, speak of as an
'internal perfecting tendency' or 'entelechy.' In
Aristotle's conception of ^movement,' as outlined
in his Physics, we find something very analogous
to our modern biological conception of transfor-
mation in development, for he analyzes 'move-
ment' as every change, as every realization of
what is possible, consisting in: {a) substantial
movement, origin and decay — as we should now
80 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
say, development and degeneration; (b) quan-
titative movement, addition and subtraction, or,
in modern terms, the gain and loss of parts; (c)
qualitative movement, or the transition of one
material into another, in metamorphosis and
change of function; (d) local movement, or
change of place, in the transposition of parts.
Thus Aristotle thought out the four essential fea-
tures of Evolution as a process; but we have
found no evidence that he actually applied this
conception to the development of organisms or
of organs, as we do now in the light of our mod-
ern knowledge of the actual stages of Evolution.
This enables us to understand Aristotle's view
of Nature as the principle of motion and rest
comprised in his four causes. Here again he is
more or less metaphysical. The first is the 'phys-
ical material cause,' or matter itself; the second
is the 'physical formal cause,' or the forces of the
'perfecting principle'; the third is the 'abstract
final cause,' the fitness, adaptation, or purpose,
the good of each and all; the fourth, presiding
over all, is the 'efficient cause,' the prime mover,
or God. Aristotle attributed all the imperfec-
tions of Nature to the struggle between the ma-
terial and formal causes — ^to the resistance of
matter to form. There is room for difference of
opinion as to whether he considered the efficient
cause, or God, as constantly present and work-
AMONG THE GREEKS 81
ing in Nature, or as having established a pre-
ordained harmony. Romanes points out that
Aristotle, in his Mctaphjjsics, asks the crucial
question whether the principle of order and ex-
cellence (i. e. the operation of natural laws) is
self-existing from the beginning, or whether, like
the discipline of an army, it is apparently in-
herent, but really due to a general in the back-
ground.
Whether or not Aristotle viewed the Prime
Mover as sustaining his laws or as having pre-
ordained them, he certainly does not believe in
Special Creation by divine fiat either of adapta-
tions or of organisms, nor in the interference of
the Prime Mover in Nature; the struggle to-
ward perfection is a natural process, as where he
says: ''It w due to the resistance of matter to
form that Nature can only rise by degrees from
lower to higher types J' There is, therefore, no
doubt that he was not a teleologist in the modern
supernatural sense ; at the very heart of his the-
ory of Evolution was this 'internal perfecting
tendency,'^ driving organisms progressively for-
ward into more perfect types.
He viewed man as the flower of Nature, to-
ward which all had been tending, the crowning
end, purpose, or final cause. His nature philoso-
iCompare Hans Driesch: The Science and Philosophy of the
Organism.
82 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
phy was therefore anthropocentric : "Plants are
evidently for the sake of animals and animals
for the sake of man; thus Nature, which does
nothing in vain, has done all things for the sake
of man."
Aristotle's concept of an internal perfecting
tendency is brought out clearly and emphatically
in the most striking passage of all his writings,
where he undertakes to refute an argument at-
tributed to Empedocles. This is of the greatest
interest today, because Aristotle clearly states
and rejects a chance theory of the origin or adap-
tive structures in animals altogether similar to
that of Darwin.
In Empedocles' crude suggestion of the sur-
vival of adapted beings and the extinction of in-
adapted beings Aristotle perceived the gist of an
argument which might be applied not only to
entire organisms but to parts of organisms, to
explain purposive structures, and which might
thus become a dangerous rival to his own concept
of the origin of purposive structures by the di-
rect operation of his ^perfecting principle.'
In the following passages, selected from the
early books of his Physics, we seem to gain a
clear insight into Aristotle's whole chain of rea-
soning, in a manner which enables us to compare
it with modern lines of thought. The headings
and brackets are my own; the passages are se-
AMONG THE GREEKS 83
lected, freely adapted and italicized, from Tay-
lor's translation (1806) of the Physics and
brought together to give a clear idea of Aris-
totle's meaning in his own language, as follows :^
[Nature is twofold, namely. Form and Matter^
For if we look to the ancient philosophers, such
as Empedocles and Democritus, it would seem
that matter alone should be regarded, for they
attended in a very small degree to form . . . but
it is the province of physical science to have a
knowledge of both. Further, it belongs to physi-
cal science to consider the purpose or end for
which a thing subsists. The poet was led to say:
An end it has, for which it was produced.
This is absurd, for not that which is last deserves
the name of end, but that which is most perfect.
[O/ Fortuity in Nature'l
Empedocles^ says that the greater part of the
members of animals were generated by chance;
while there are others who assign chance as the
iBook II, chaps. II, IV, V, VIII.
^Empedocles does not speak rightly when he says that many
things are inherent in animals because it thus happened in their
generation; as for instance a spine composed of many vertebrae
not produced for some purpose, but from chance or accident.
{Parts of AnimalSi Book I.)
84 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
cause of the heavenly bodies, and Intellect (or
Design) as the cause of all earthly bodies. But it
is more probable that the heavens should have
been produced by Nature, Intellect (Design) , or
something else of this kind, and that they should
subsist through such a designing cause than that
frail and mortal animals were produced by it;
for order and a firm and certain condition of
being are far more obvious in celestial natures
than in us; but an uncertain, inconstant, and
fortuitous condition is rather the property of the
mortal race. . . . Chance and fortune are se-
quels (secondary) to both Intellect and Nature.
Hence if chance were in an eminent degree the
cause of the heavens, it would nevertheless be
necessary that Intellect and Nature should be
prior causes of many other things as well as of
this Universe itself.
[Of Necessity (Law) and Design in Nature']
We must show first, why Nature is a cause
which subsists for some purpose, and second, how
necessity (natural law) subsists in physical con-
cerns, for all natural causes are referred to this.
But some may question what hinders Nature
from operating for some purpose rather than
from necessity; for example, that rain falls for
the benefit of the corn rather than because that
AMONG THE GREEKS 85
ascending vapor must be cooled and cooling it
must descend as water. But Jupiter rains not
that corn may be increased, but from necessity.
Similarly, if some one's corn is destroyed by rain,
it does not rain for this purpose, but as an acci-
dental circumstance. It does not appear to be
from fortune or chance that it frequently rains in
winter, but from necessity (law).
[Adaptive Structures 7iot Produced by Sur-
vivals of the Fittest^
What, then, hinders but that the parts in Na-
ture may also thus arise (namely, according to
law) ? For instance, that the teeth should arise
from necessity, the front teeth sharp and adapted
to divide the food, the grinders broad and
adapted to breaking the food into pieces. [An-
other explanation may he offered.'] It may be
said that they were not made for this purpose
{i, e, for this adaptation), but that this (adap-
tative) purposive arrangement came about by
chance; and the same reasoning is applied to
other parts of the body in which subsistence for
some purpose is apparent. And it is argued that
where all thvngs happened as if they were made
for some jmrpose, being aptly (adaptively)
united by chance, these were preserved, but such
as were not aptly (adaptively) made, these were
86 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
lost and still perish, according to what Em-
pedocles says concerning the bull species with
human heads. This, therefore, and similar rea-
soning, may lead some to doubt on this subject.
It is, however, impossible that these (adap-
tive) parts should subsist (arise) in this manner ;
for these parts, and everything which is produced
in Nature, are either always, or, for the most
part, thus {L e, adaptively) produced; but this
is not the case with anything which is produced
by fortune or chance,^ even as it does not appear
to be fortune or chance that it frequently rains
in winter. ... If these things appear to be
either by chance, or to be for some purpose, —
and we have shown that they cannot be by
chance — then it follows that they must be for
some purpose. There is, therefore, a purpose in
things which are produced by, and exist from.
Nature.
\^A Sequence of Purposive Productions']
Since, also. Nature is twofold, consisting of
matter and of form, the latter being an end for
the sake of which the rest subsists, form will also
be a cause for the sake of which natural produc-
tions subsist. . . . Further still, it is necessary
^Compare Darwin: "I have hitherto sometimes spoken as if the
variations . . . were due to chance. This, of course, is a wholly-
incorrect expression, but it merely serves to acknowledge plainly
our ignorance of the cause of each particular variation."
AMONG THE GREEKS 87
(i. e. according to law) that germs should have
been first jiroduced, and not ivimediately ani-
mals; and that soft mass which first subsisted
was the germ. In plants, also, there is purpose,
but it is less distinct ; and this shows that plants
were produced in the same manner as animals,
not by chance, as by the union of olives upon
grape-vines. Similarly, it may be argued, that
there should be an accidental generation (or pro-
duction) of the germs of things, but he who as-
serts this subverts Nature herself, for Nature
produces those things which, being continually
moved by a certain principle contained in them-
selves, arrive at a certain end.
These passages seem to contain absolute evi-
dence that Aristotle had substantially the mod-
ern conception of the progressive ascent of life
from a primordial, soft mass of living matter to
the most perfect forms, and that even these he
beheved were progressing to higher forms. His
argument of the analogy between the operation
of secondary natural law, rather than of chance,
both in the lifeless and in the living world, is a
perfectly logical one, and his consequent rejec-
tion of the hypothesis of the survival of the fittest
is a sound induction from his own limited knowl-
edge of Nature. It seems perfectly clear that he
placed all under secondary natural laws. If he
88 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
had accepted and refined Empedocles' crude
hypothesis of the survival of the fittest he would
have been a literal prophet of Darwinism.
The Post- Aristotelians
Thus we reach in this great natural philoso-
pher the highest biological level attained by the
Greeks, and we now pass to a rapid decline in
Greek scientific thought and productiveness until
its apparent extinction and subsequent revival
some centuries later.
We notice a marked chasm between Aristotle's
theistic and dualistic teaching and the sceptical,
or rather agnostic and monistic, teaching of Epi-
curus. The Epicureans developed a mechanical
and anti-teleological conception of the universe,
but they did not advance the inquiry into natural
causation. The gap widened. The materialistic
and agnostic tendency of Empedocles, Democri-
tus, and Epicurus was revived by Lucretius, and
culminated in him for the time. The theistic ten-
dency of Aristotle led to his adoption by, and
great influence with, the philosophers of the early
Christian Church. In general, the movement of
free physical inquiry among the Greeks was
checked by the conquest of Alexander and the
loss of national independence. The interest in in-
vestigation into Nature, and speculation upon
the causes of things, subsided. Ethics rose among
the Stoics.
f
AMONG THE GREEKS 89
In the cosmology of tlic Stoics we have tlie germ of
a monistic and pantheistic conception of evolution.
All things are said to be developed out of an original
being, which is at once material (fire) and spiritual
(the Deity), and in turn they will dissolve back into
this primordial source. . . .
The Epicureans differed from the Stoics by
adopting a purely mechanical view of the world-
process. Their fundamental conception is that of
Democritus ; they seek to account for the formation
of the cosmos, with its order and regularity, by set-
ting out with the idea of an original (vertical) mo-
tion of the atoms, which somehow or other results in
movements towards and from one another. . . .^
Aristotle's teachings in zoology and botany
were continued by his pupils among the Peri-
patetics, Theophrastus and Preaxagoras, and by
their successors, Herophilus and Erasistratus.
Strato of Lampsacus developed a system of nat-
uralism but he rejected Aristotle's concept of an
original source of movement and life outside the
world of matter in favor of an internal principle.
Unfortunately, the greater part of the works
of Theophrastus, who was both botanist and
mineralogist, is lost; his History of Plants was
an attempt to supplement the History of Ani-
mals of his master. The last two members of this
school were physicians, who continued their stud-
ies in Alexandria and became the most distin-
IP. Chalmers Mitchell: Evolution. Enc. Brit., vol. 10, p. 24.
90 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
guished human anatomists of the time before
Galen.
Epicurus (341-270 B.C.)
The only writer of the third or post-Aris-
totelian period of Greek philosophy who con-
cerns us here is Epicurus, founder of the Epi-
curean materialistic school, of which Lucretius
was a follower.
Epicurus' chief interest in philosophy w^as to
establish the principle of natural versus that of
supernatural causation, to combat the argument
of teleology or Design. He originated nothing in
Evolution, but gathered from Empedocles and
Democritus arguments in support of the princi-
ple of natural law. Zeller observes as his char-
acteristic that he was totally lacking in the
scientific spirit which could qualify him as an
investigator. His main animus was to combat the
supernatural from every side, yet he was unable
to direct his followers to any naturalistic expla-
nation of value, giving them rather free rein in
the choice of the most groundless hypotheses.
As for the general conception that the pur-
poseful may arise by selection or survival from
the unpurposeful, which is credited to Epicu-
reanism by some modern writers, this conception
belongs primarily to Aristotle, who, as we have
seen, formulated the crude myth of Empedocles
AMONG THE GREEKS 91
into the language of modern science, with the
motive of clearly stating a possible explanation
of the origin of the purposeful in order to clearly
refute it.
Epicurus was influenced by Democritus and
his doctrine of atomism, excluding teleology at
every present point as well as at the beginning
of the world, supporting the mechanical concep-
tion of Nature, and maintaining that every in-
dividual thing is to be explained in a purely me-
chanical manner. Convinced that only natural
causes prevail, Epicurus did not concern him-
self with inquiries as to their character. He also
taught the origin of life by spontaneous genera-
tion, that living beings arose directly from the
earth, including many marvelous forms, and
adopted Empedocles' notion that only those ca-
pable of life and reproduction have been pre-
served.
Lucretius (99-55 b. c.)
From Epicurus we take a long leap in time to
T. Lucretius Carus, the Roman poet, whose in-
quiry into the origin and nature of living things,
as we have observed, revived the teachings of
Empedocles, of Democritus, and especially of
Epicurus. He connected with these many obser-
vations of his own. The fact that he was an orig-
92 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
inal observer of Nature must be inferred from
his considerable knowledge of animals and
plants. It is possible that the speculations treated
in his great poem may have been more precisely
recorded in some of his lost books. His indebted-
ness to Empedocles, to Epicurus, to Democritus,
to Anaxagoras and to Heraclitus is beautifully
phrased in the following passage:^
This terror, then, this darkness of the mind,
Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light.
Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse,
But only Nature's aspect and her law.
Which, teaching us, hath this exordium :
Nothing from nothing ever yet was horn.
Fear holds dominion over mortality
Only because, seeing in land and sky
So much the cause whereof no wise they know,
Men think Divinities are working there.
Meantime, when once we know from nothing still
Nothing can be create, we shall divine
More clearly what we seek: those elements
From which alone all things created are,
And how accomplished by no tool of Gods.
Suppose all sprang from all things : any kind
Might take its origin from any thing.
No fixed seed required. Men from the sea
Might rise, and from the land the scaly breed.
And, fowl full fledged come bursting from the sky;
The horned cattle, the herds and all the wild
^0/ the Nature of Things. Book I, 146. Leonard translation.
AMONG THE GREEKS 93
Would haunt with varying offspring tilth and waste ;
Nor would the same fruits keep their olden trees,
But each might grow from any stock or limb
By chance and change. Indeed, and were there not
For each its procreant atoms, could things have
Each its unalterable mother old?
But, since produced from fixed seeds are all.
Each birth goes forth upon the shores of light
From its own stuff, from its own primal bodies.
And all from all cannot become, because
In each resides a secret power its own.
Lucretius followed ^schylus as the second
poet of Evolution. His De Rerum Natura resus-
citated the doctrines of Epicurus, and set them
in a far more favorable light, building up anew
the mechanical conception of Nature. Lucretius
was also familiar with Empedocles, and, as we
have seen, put his teachings into verse. Here,
again, is a difference of opinion between Lange
and Zeller. Lange refers to the end of the first
book, in which he claims that Lucretius briefly
announces the magnificent doctrine first pro-
posed by Empedocles, that all the adaptations to
be found in the universe and especially in organic
life are merely special cases of the infinite possi-
bilities of mechanical events. Thus Lucretius
says:
Verily not by design do the first beginnings of
things station themselves each in his right place, oc-
94 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
cupied bj keen-sighted intelligence, . . . but be-
cause after trying motions and unions of every kind,
at length they fall into arrangements, such as those
out of which this our sum of things has been formed,
. . . and the earth, fostered by the heat of the sun,
begins to renew this produce, and the race of living
things to come up and flourish.
Zeller rightly contends that Lucretius did not
really apply the Empedocles theory to the origin
of adaptations in the modern Darwinian sense,
for his treatment is simply a poetical restatement
of Empedocles' own words, unmodified by the
great advances of science. The creations which,
according to Lucretius, were thus eliminated
from the earth were the mythical monsters, such
as the centaurs and the chimseras.
Lucretius places the mechanical conception of
Nature over against the teleological ; we find that
he does not carry his conception of Nature as
Aristotle does into the law of gradual develop-
ment of organic life, but like Parmenides, De-
mocritus, and Anaxagoras, he conceives of ani-
mals as arising by abiogenesis directly from the
earth :^
Plants and trees arise directly out of the earth
in the same manner that feathers and hair grow
from the bodies of animals. Living beings certainly
have not fallen down from heaven, nor, as Anaxago-
iBook V, 780.
AMONG THE GREEKS 95
ras supposed, have land animals arisen from the sea.
But as even now many animals under the influence
of rain, and the heat of the sun, arise from the earth,
so under the fresh, youthful, productive forces of
the younger earth, they were spontaneously pro-
duced in larger numbers. In this manner were first
produced birds, from the warmth of spring; then
other animals sprang from the womb of the earth,
since first mounds grew up from which people sprang
forth, for they had been nourished within. In an
analogous manner these young earth-children were
nourished by springs of milk.
Only as an after-thought, not as a part of Na-
ture's method, Lucretius borrows from Epicurus,
and thus probably indirectly from Empedocles,
the 'Darwinian' survival of the fittest idea that
some of these earth-born beings were unable to
live and were replaced by others. As a rationalist
he naturally suppressed the mythological cen-
taur and chim^era from his direct history of cre-
ation. In the following passages^ we find these
purely fanciful speculations of Lucretius beauti-
fully expressed:
And first the race she reared of verdant herbs,
Glistening o'er every hill ; the fields at large
Shone with the verdant tincture, and the trees
Felt the deep impulse, and with outstretched arms
Broke from their bonds rejoicing. As the down
iLucretius: On the Nature of Things. Book V, 800. Poetical
version by John Mason Good.
96 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
Shoots from the winged nations, or from beasts
Bristles or hair, so poured the new-born earth
Plants, fruits, and herbage. Then, in order next,
Raised she the sentient tribes, in various modes,
By various powers distinguished: for nor heaven
Down dropped them, nor from ocean's briny waves
Sprang they, terrestrial sole; whence, justly. Earth
Claims the dear name of mother, since alone
Flowed from herself whate'er the sight surveys.
E'en now oft rears she many a sentient tribe,
By showers and sun-sliine ushered into day.
Whence less stupendous tribes should then have risen
More, and of ampler make, herself new-formed.
In flower of youth, and Ether all mature.
Of these birds first, of wing and plume diverse,
Broke their light shells in spring-time : as in spring
Still breaks the grasshopper his curious web.
And seeks, spontaneous, foods and vital air.
Hence the dear name of mother, o'er and o'er,
Earth claims most justly, since the race of man
Loncp bore she of herself, each brutal tribe
Wild-wandering o'er the mountains, and the birds
Gay-winged, that cleave, diverse, the liquid air.
It thus appears that we cannot truly speak of
Lucretius as an evolutionist, in the sense of grad-
ual development by descent, although he believed
in the successive appearance of different forms
of life. His nearest approach to true evolution
teaching was in his account of the development
of the faculties and arts among the races of men,
AMONG THE GREEKS 97
in which he borrowed bodily from the drama of
iEschylus, Prometheus Bound. In shutting out
Aristotle and his purposive interpretation of Na-
ture, he excluded the only Greek who came near
the modern idea of descent of higher forms from
lower. The animals and plants of Lucretius arise
full-formed direct from the earth. This is not
Evolution, yet it plays an important part in the
later history of the idea. Views not unhke these
w^ere revived as late as the eighteenth century.
Although a Roman, Lucretius w^as virtually a
Greek in his natural philosophy. He terminated
a period of thought, and in his poem summed up
in a pure form all the non- Aristotelian teachings.
After him the Greek ideas were grafted upon
Arabic and Christian philosophy and science.
This is, therefore, the point at which to consider
what were the Greek legacies to their followers.
The last of the Greek naturalists were Dios-
coridus, a physician, observer, and botanist liv-
ing in the time of the C^sars, and the celebrated
Galen, physician and anatomist, living under
Marcus Aurelius. Galen (131-201) has been
compared both with Hippocrates (460-377 b. c.)
and with Aristotle, whose method of observation
he followed and applied to human anatomy. This
was the waning of the scientific movement under
Grecian influence.
98 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
Pliny (23-79)
Pliny, the next naturalist of note, was rather
a collector of anecdotes than an original ob-
server. He was the author of the Naturalis his-
toria, a voluminous work of one hundred and
sixty volumes, chiefly of compilation. He added
nothing to the evolution idea; as remarked by
John Edwin Sandys,^ "he had neither the tem-
perament for original investigation, nor the lei-
sure necessary for the purpose. It is obvious
that one who spent all his time in reading and in
writing, and in making excerpts from his prede-
cessors, had none left for mature and indepen-
dent thought, or for patient experimental obser-
vation of the phenomena of nature."
The Legacy of the Greeks^
The first element in the legacy of the Greeks
was their scientific curiosity, their desire to find
a natural explanation for the origin and ex-
istence of all things, especially living things, and,
above all, man. This is by no means a universal
characteristic of the human mind, for we know
that many Oriental races are wholly devoid of it
and have made no scientific progress. The ground
motive in science is a high order of curiosity, led
lEnc. Brit., vol. 21, p. 843.
2Compare The Legacy of the Greeks, edited by R. W. Living-
stone, 1924, also Osborn: Man Rises to Parnassus.
AMONG THE GREEKS 99
on by ambition to overcome all obstacles in ob-
servation and discovery.
The Origin of Life
The iirst biological question asked by the
Greeks was as to the origin of life. Extremely
early arose the doctrine of Anaximander that all
life originated in spontaneous generation from
the water. Later this was somewhat modified into
the doctrine held by Empedocles that life origi-
nated in the primordial terrestrial slime, or
mingling of earth and water, especially along the
emerging shores of the earth. Later still, quite a
distinct idea was put forth by Anaxagoras, that
life originated in the coming together and devel-
opment of pre-existent germs in the air or ether,
animals and plants springing directly from them.
This origin of life from germs of course sur-
reptitiously placed the problem only one degree
farther back, apparently but not really evading
the difficulty. It was a fruitful idea, and there-
after many of the doctrines as to the origin of
life contained the conception of primordial
germs. Aristotle came nearest the modern con-
ception of protozoan primordial life when he
wrote that all animals and plants originated in
germs composed of soft masses of matter, al-
though he inconsistently taught that even some
100 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
of the higher forms sprang directlj^ from the
earth, leaving out the germ stage altogether.
Mutability of Life
The basic evolution idea among the Greeks
had its roots in the notion of the changing rather
than of the fixed order of all things, including
living things, which came from Heraclitus. The
essence of this principle, that everything was in
a state of movement, that nothing had reached a
state of rest, underlies the later doctrine of the
gradually increasing perfection of organisms.
The essence of the idea of movement as seen
in the gradual development of organisms, how-
ever, was much earlier, for it originated with
Anaximander, upon whose rude notion of the
origin of the 'fish-men' Empedocles and other
writers built up their theories. Empedocles
added to the conception of development a num-
ber of important principles. First, he suggested
that plant life preceded animal life, and this sug-
gestion was taken up and expanded by Aris-
totle. Second, he concluded that the present
world of life was still formative or incomplete,
a modification of the general notion of Hera-
clitus. Third, he suggested, with apparently re-
markable prevision, that the first organisms were
formless masses without distinctions of sex, that
afterward the sexes were separated, and that
AMONG THE GREEKS 101
the existing modes of reproduction of the less
perfect were followed by the more perfect. This
idea, as we have seen, however, w^as not even re-
motely related to our modern conception of
primordial asexual organisms, for his 'formless
masses' were mythological monsters.
Survival of the Fittest
Empedocles further set forth a rude doctrine
of the successive production directly from the
earth of larger animal types possessing greater
or lesser capacity of living and reproducing. The
less perfect forms, as well as the more perfect,
were produced fortuitously. The misshapen, ill-
combined monsters were eliminated, one after
the other, until finally Xature produced animals
capable of feeding themselves and of propaga-
tion. Associated as a theoretical explanation with
these vague conceptions of the fact of the grad-
ual evolution of life w^as the dimly foreshadowed
'survival of the fittest' theory of Empedocles,
that the perfect forms were finally produced as
the result of a long series of fortuitous combina-
tions. Finally, the principles of adaptation, or
fitness of certain structures to certain ends, had
been clearly brought out, and gave rise to the
distinct problem of the origin or cause of adap-
tations.
102 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
Internal Perfecting Principle
Aristotle developed a wholly different notion
of successive development, more like the modern
theory in the succession of higher organisms from
lower by descent and modification; he set forth
the wholly diverse theory that there was no
fortuity in Evolution, but that the succession of
forms was due to the action of an internal per-
fecting principle originally implanted by the
Divine Intelligence. So that we find in Aristotle,
most clearly stated, what has been one of the
burning questions of biology ever since —
whether adaptations are due solely to the for-
tuitous combination of parts or to an internal
perfecting principle.
Thus the Greeks left the later world face to
face with the problem of the causation of life in
three forms: first, whether intelligent Design is
constantly operating in Nature ; second, whether
Nature is under the operation of natural causes
due from the beginning to the laws of chance,
and containing no evidences of Design, even in
their origin ; and third, whether Nature is under
the operation of natural causes originally im-
planted by intelligent Design.
Ill
THE EVOLUTION IDEA AMONG THE
THEOLOGIANS AND NATURAL
PHILOSOPHERS
Eine hochst wichtige Betrachtung der Geschichte der
Wissenschaften ist die, dass sich aus den ersten Anfangen
einer Entdeckung manches in den Gang des Wissens her-
an- und durchzieht, welches den Fortschritt hindert, sogar
ofters lahmt. — Goethe.
Sur tout, nous tiendrons pour regie infaillible, que ce
que Dieu a revele est incomparablement plus certain que
tout le reste : afin que si quel que etincelle de raison sembloit
nous suggerer quelque chose au contraire, nous soyons tou-
jours prests a soumettre nostre jugement a ce qui vient de
sa part. Mais pour ce qui est des veritez dont la Theologie
ne se mesle point, il n'y auroit pas d'apparence qu'un
homme qui veut estre Philosophe, receust pour vray ce qu'il
n'a point connu estre tel; & qu'il aimast mieux se fier a
ses sens, c'est a dire, aux jugemens inconsiderez de son en-
fance, qu'a sa raison, lors qu'il est en estat de la bien con-
duire. — Descartes.
THE EVOLUTION IDEA AMONG THE
THEOLOGIANS AND NATURAL
PHILOSOPHERS
100-1800
Prolonged Influence of Greek Philosophy on Theology —
The Fathers and Schoolmen: Gregory, Augustine, Erigena,
Aquinas, Roger Bacon — Arabic Science and Philosophy:
Avicenna, Avempace, Abubacer — Transition to the Literal
Interpretation of Genesis: Leonardo da Vinci, Bruno, Sua-
rez — The Awakening of Science — Influence of the Natural
Philosophers: Francis Bacon, Descartes, Leibnitz, Kant,
Lessing, Herder, Schelling.
AS all learning in Europe was for centuries
L under the guardianship of the Church, it
is important to look into the teachings of the
great theologians upon the origin and develop-
ment of life. This teaching sprang from two
sources — the revelation of the order of creation
in the Book of Genesis and the natural philoso-
phy of Plato and Aristotle. Up to the time of
Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) Plato and Aris-
totle exerted a much stronger influence on the
natural philosophy of the Church than did the
literal interpreters of the first chapter of Genesis.
Philo of Alexandria introduced in the first
century what has been described as the 'Helle-
105
106 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
nizing of the Old Testament,' or the allegorical
method of exegesis. By this, as Erdmann ob-
serves, the Bible narrative was found to contain
a deeper, and particularly an allegorical, in ad-
dition to its literal, interpretation; this was not
conscious disingenuousness but a natural mode
of amalgamating the Greek philosophic with the
Hebraic doctrines.
Among the Christian Fathers the movement
toward a partly naturalistic interpretation of the
order of creation was made by Gregory of Nyssa
in the fourth century, and was completed by
Augustine^ in the fourth and fifth centuries.
Plainly as the direct or instantaneous creation of
animals and plants appeared to be taught in
Genesis, Augustine read this in the light of pri-
mary causation and the gradual development
from the imperfect to the perfect of Aristotle.
This most influential teacher thus handed
down to his followers opinions which closely con-
form to the progressive views of those theolo-
gians of the present day who have accepted the
evolution theory. In proof of this Greek influ-
ence we find that Augustine also adopted some
of the Greek notions of the spontaneous genera-
tion of life. In the Middle Ages analogous views
were held by Erigena, Roscellinus, William of
Occam, Albertus Magnus; and Augustine was
iSee Osborn: Impressions of Great Naturalists, 1928, pp. 193^.
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 107
finally followed by Aquinas, who is now one of
the leading authorities of the Church, and by
Roger Bacon. Bruno struck out into an alto-
gether different vein of thought.
What is known as 'Arabian' philosophy owed
to Arabia little more than its name and its lan-
guage. The whole movement is little else than a
chapter in the history of Aristotelianism. It
opened in the ninth and closed in the twelfth cen-
tury. In 1209 the study of the Arabic writers
was interdicted in Paris. About the middle of the
twelfth century Latin versions of the works of
Avicenna and of several Aristotelian treatises
were produced in Spain; the movement toward
introducing Arabian science and philosophy into
Europe culminated in the first half of the thir-
teenth century. In 1497 Aristotle was expounded
in Greek in Padua. A half-century later Bruno
appeared as the last exponent of Greek ideas of
Evolution.
The reaction against this Hellenistic reading
of Genesis naturally came when Christian the-
ology shook off Aristotelianism, and this was
brought about indirectly by the ecclesiastic op-
position to the introduction of Arabic science,^
which also embodied much of Aristotle. Thus
among the first outspoken opponents of Augus-
iCompare Thatcher-Wallace: Arabian Philosophy, Enc. Brit.,
vol. I, and Case: Aristotle, Enc. Brit., vol. II.
108 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
tine's teaching, and first champion of Hteralism,
was Suarez, a Jesuit of Spain, a country which
through the invasion of the Moors had become
the second home of Arabic science and phi-
losophy.
No advance whatever in the development of
the evolution idea was made in this long period ;
scientific speculation and observation were at a
standstill except among the Arabs. It is simply
a record of the preservation of the progress to-
ward the evolution idea made by the Greeks.
In the very decades when this progress was
stamped out by the literalistic Jesuit theology of
Spain and Italy, the new modern or scientific
era in the development of the evolution idea was
opening in the teachings of Francis Bacon and
of the natural philosophers who closely suc-
ceeded him.
The Fatheks and Schoolmen
Gregory (331-396)
Gregory of Nyssa taught that Creation was
potential. God imparted to matter its fundamen-
tal properties and laws. The objects and com-
pleted forms of the universe developed gradu-
ally out of chaotic material.
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 109
Augustine (353-430)
Augustine drew this distinction still more
sharply, as CotterilP and Guttler" show, between
the virtual creation of organisms, the ratio semi-
nalis, and the actual visible coming forth of
things out of formless matter. All development
takes its natural course through the powers im-
parted to matter by the Creator. Even the cor-
poreal structure of man himself is according to
this plan and therefore a product of this natural
development. Augustine, as to the origin of life,
took his ground half-w^ay between biogenesis and
abiogenesis. From the beginning there had ex-
isted two kinds of germs of living things : first,
visible ones, placed by the Creator in animals
and plants ; and second, invisible ones, latent and
becoming active only under certain conditions of
combination and temperature. It is these which
produce plants and animals in great numbers
without any cooperation of existing organisms.
Augustine thus sought a naturalistic interpreta-
tion of the Mosaic record, or a potential rather
than a special creation, and taught that in the
institution of Nature we should not look for
iHenry Cotterill: Does Science Aid Faith in Regard to Crea-
tion? 1883, pp. 63-75.
^C. Giittler: Lorenz Oken und Sein Verhdltnis zur Modernen
Entwickelungslehre.
110 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
miracles but for the laws of Nature. As Moore^
says, Augustine distinctly rejected Special Cre-
ation in favor of a doctrine which, without any
violence to language, we may call a theory of
Evolution.
Cotterill traces the history of Augustine's
thought upon Genesis. At first he found almost
insuperable difficulties in the literal, as con-
trasted with the allegorical, interpretation. It
seems that the account of Creation was a favor-
ite subject of ridicule with the Manichseans, who
denied the inspiration of the Old Testament.
Thus the outcome of Augustine's studies was a
volume entitled De Genesi contra Manichceos.
Augustine took a sound philosophical position
upon natural causation, after considering the
question of time and saying that we ought not to
think of the six days of the Creation as being
equivalent to our solar days, nor of the working
of God itself as God now works anything in
time, but rather as He has worked from Whom
time itself had its beginning. In explaining the
passage, "In the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth," he says: "In the begin-
ning God made the heaven and the earth, as if
this were the seed of the heaven and the earth,
although as yet all the material of heaven and of
earth was in confusion; but because it was cer-
1 Aubrey Moore: Science and the Faith, 1892, p. 176.
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 111
tain that from this the heaven and the earth
would be, therefore the material itself is called
by that name." Again, as in the foregoing pas-
sage, in a later passage he speaks of Creation as
of things being brought into due order, "not by
intervals of time, but by series of causes, so that
those things which in the mind of God were made
simultaneously might be brought to their com-
pletion by the sixfold representation of that one
day."
Of these passages Cotterill remarks:
. . . Both the language itself . . . and yet more
his [Augustine's] profound sense of the impossibil-
ity of representing in the forms of finite thought the
operations of the infinite and eternal Mind, com-
pelled this great theologian to look beyond the mere
letter of the inspired history of Creation, and . . .
indicate principles of interpretation which supply by
anticipation . . . very valuable guidance when we
compare other conclusions of modern science with
this teaching of Holy Scripture.
Cotterill continues that Augustine again illus-
trates the work of creation by the growth of a
tree from its seed, in which are originally all its
various branches and other parts, which do not
suddenly spring up such and so large as they are
when complete, but in that order with which we
are familiar in Nature. All these things are in
112 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
the seed, not by material substance, but by causal
energy and potency;
even so as in the grain itself there were invisibly all
things simultaneously, which were in time to grow
into the tree, so the world itself is to be thought of,
when God simultaneously created all things, as hav-
ing at the same time in itself all things that were
made in it and vdih it, when the day itself was cre-
ated : not only the heaven, w ith the sun and moon and
stars, and so forth, but also those things which the
water and the earth produced potentialiter atque cau-
saliter, before that, in due time, and after long de-
lays, they grew up in such manner as they are now
known to us in those works of God which He is work-
ing even to the present hour.
Erigena (800- )
With Augustine the progress of comment
upon the interpretation of Genesis came nearly
to an end. As Guttler observes, men in the clois-
ters and other centers of culture turned to medi-
cine and ethics ; yet, even in this dark period, an
occasional friend of the gradual-creation idea
appeared. Such was John Scotus Erigena, who
simply borrowed from Aristotle and Augustine :
From the Uncreated Creating Principles go forth
created and self-created beings under the embracing
causce primordiales. These causce are equivalent to
the Greek 'ideas,' that is the kinds, the eternal forms
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 113
and unchangeable grounds of reason upon which the
world is regulated. Under the influence of the third
person of the Godhead, the potentialities of matter
are developed, out of which creatures take their
origin. In a retrogressive circle, all things return to
God.
Here Erigena turned to Plato's conception of
final cause.
Aquinas (1225-1274)
Of much greater influence is the teaching of
Thomas Aquinas as late as the middle of the
thirteenth century, for he was and is one of the
highest authorities in the Church. He does not
contribute to the evolution idea but simply ex-
pounds the natural philosophy of Augustine:
As to production of plants, Augustine holds a dif-
ferent view, . . . for some say that on the third day
plants were actually produced, each in his kind — a
view favored by the superficial reading of Scripture.
But Augustine says that the earth is then said to
have brought forth grass and trees causaliter; that
is, it then received power to produce them. ... In
those first days . . . God made creation primarily
or causaliter, and then rested from His work.
Roger Bacon (1214-1294)
The outstanding figure of the Middle Ages in
regard to the investigation of natural laws is.
114 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWEST
however, Roger Bacon, whose works have been
the subject of so much criticism. Singer^ is of
the opinion that only in the works of Bacon do
we encounter a clear and unmistakable demand
for the search into Nature. Taking into consid-
eration the facts of Bacon's personal idiosyncra-
sies and the weakness of the evidence of his sci-
entific achievements in contrast to his constant
demand for investigation and evidence, he con-
siders that Bacon's realization, in advance of his
age, of the nature and application of the ex-
perimental method is an established fact, that to
Bacon 'experimental science' was the sole means
of obtaining knowledge. Thus he quotes Bacon:
All sciences except this either merely employ argu-
ments to prove conclusions, like the purely specula-
tive sciences, or have universal and imperfect conclu-
sions. Experimental science alone can ascertain to
perfection what can be effected by Nature, what by
art, what by fraud. It alone teaches how to judge all
the follies of the magicians just as logic tests argu-
ment.
Arabic Science and Philosophy
If we again look back several centuries before
Aquinas and Bacon to the Arabs, we find that,
while science declined in Europe, it was kept
iCharles Singer: Historical Relations of Religion and Science.
In Science, Religion and Reality, London, 1926.
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 115
alive, or rather revived, in Arabia. The natural
philosophy of the Arabs, which was largely de-
rived from Aristotle, was destined to exert a
considerable influence in Europe. Between 813
and 833 the Historia Animalium and other works
of Aristotle were translated into Arabic and
were soon held in the greatest reverence. Avi-
cenna marked the highest point which science
reached in Arabia, and the culmination of the en-
cycloj^sedic and original studies. Thereafter there
was a decline in the East, and about the same
period there came the inauguration of scientific
and philosophical studies in the West. Between
961 and 976 the scientific works of Aristotle and
of Arabic commentators and writers were rap-
idly imported into Spain, and the interest in
these subjects became intense.
Avicenna (dSO-lOST ), Avempace ( -1138),
Ahuhaccr ( -1185)
The three scientific writers from whom we
may quote fragments are Avicenna in Arabia
and Avempace and Abubacer in Spain. Draper^
quotes from Avicenna on the origin of moun-
tains, showing that he was a unif ormitarian :
Mountains may be due to two causes. Either they
are effects of upheavals of the crust of the earth,
'^Intellectual Development of Europe, 1863, p. 305.
116 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
such as might occur during a violent earthquake, or
they are the effect of water, which, cutting for itself
a new route, has denuded the valleys, the strata be-
ing of different kinds, some soft, some hard. The
winds and waters disintegrate the one, but leave the
other intact. Most of the eminences of the earth have
had this latter origin. It would require a long period
of time for all such changes to be accomplished, dur-
ing w^hich the mountains themselves might be some-
what diminished in size. But that water has been the
main cause of these effects is proved by the existence
of fossil remains of aquatic and other animals on
many mountains.
This indicates that a careful search through
Arabic natural philosophy would probably yield
other evidences of knowledge, not only of the uni-
formity of past and present geological changes,
but of the gradual evolution of life. It is unlikely
that the Arabs read Aristotle without extending
his theory of the origin of life to their wide sur-
vey of Nature.
We take from Guttler the following passages
regarding the Spanish philosophers:
The Arabic philosophers in Spain threw into a
stronger light the natural connection between the in-
organic and the organic world. In Avempace's (Ibn-
Badja) treatise there are said to exist between men,
animals, plants, and minerals, strong relations which
bind them into a single and united whole. Through
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 117
various grades of development, the liuman soul rises
from the level of the instincts which it shares with
animals to the "acquired intellect," wherein it frees
itself more and more from the material and the po-
tential. The "acquired intellect" is only an elimina-
tion of the "active intellect," or the Godhead, and
thereby it is possible to identify in the last stage of
recognition the subject with the object, the thought
with the existence.
Avempace, as he was known in Europe, died
in 1138. He was succeeded by Abubacer (Ibn-
Tophail), who died in 1185.
Abubacer was also a poet, and he handled an
analogous theme in an Oriental romance upon
the birth of the * Nature-man' :
There happens to be under the equator an island,
where Man comes into the world without father or
mother ; by spontaneous generation he arises, directly
in the form of a boy, from the earth, while the spirit,
which, like the sunshine, emanated from God, unites
with the body, growing out of a soft, unformed mass.
Without any intelligent surroundings, and without
education, this "Nature-man," through simple ob-
servation of the outer world, and through the combi-
nation of various appearances, rises to the knowledge
of the world and of the Godhead. First he perceives
the individuals, and then he recognizes the various
species as independent forms ; but as he compares the
varieties and species with each other, he comes to the
conclusion that they are all sprung from a single ani-
118 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
mal spirit, and at the same time that the entire
animal race forms a single whole. He makes the same
discovery among the plants, and finally he sees the
animal and plant forms in their unity, and discovers
that among all their differences they have sensitive-
ness and feeling in common ; from which he concludes
that animals and plants are one and the same thing.
Transition to the Literal Interpretation
OF Genesis
In the middle of the twelfth century was be-
gun the translation of the works of the Arabs
into Latin. In 1209 the Church Provincial Coun-
cil of Paris forbade the study of these Arabic
writers and included Aristotle's Natural Phi-
losophy in the interdict, although Albertus Mag-
nus and Thomas Aquinas endeavored to uphold
the orthodoxy of Aristotle against the preju-
dices which the heretical glosses of Arabic writ-
ers had raised against him. The Church de-
nounced as heresy all diversity of opinion and all
attempts to revive the evolution idea on the basis
of new observation, and great naturalists, even
down to the time of Buffon at the close of the
eighteenth century, were forced to recant or to
revise their publications under very strict censor-
ship by the faculties of theology.
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 119
Da Vinci (1452-1519)
Among such interdicted observations were
those of the new science of pala;ontolog>%^ in
which the incomparable Leonardo da Vinci was
a pioneer. As cited by Lyellr*
It was not till the earlier part of the sixteenth cen-
tury that geological phenomena began to attract the
attention of the Christian nations. At that period a
very animated controversy sprang up in Italy, con-
cerning the true nature and origin of marine shells,
and other organised fossils, found abundantly in the
strata of the peninsula. The celebrated painter Leo-
nardo da Vinci, who in his youth had planned and
executed some navigable canals in the north of Italy,
was one of the first who applied sound reasoning to
these subjects. The mud of rivers, he said, had cov-
ered and penetrated into the interior of fossil shells
at a time when these were still at the bottom of the
sea near the coast. 'They tell us that these shells were
formed in the hills by the influence of the stars ; but
I ask where in the hills are the stars now forming
shells of distinct ages and species? and how can the
stars explain the origin of gravel, occurring at dif-
ferent heights and composed of pebbles rounded as
if by the motion of running water ; or in what man-
ner can such a cause account for the petrifaction in
the same places of various leaves, sea-weeds, and ma-
rine crabs ?'
1 Compare Osborn: Palaeontology. Enc. Brit., vol. 20, p. 681.
2 Charles Lyell: Principles of Geology, 1877, vol. 1, pp. 30, 31.
120 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
As early as the middle of the fifteenth century
Leonardo recognized in sea-shells as well as in
the teeth of marine fishes proofs of ancient sea-
levels on what are now the sunmiits of the
Apennines. Successive observers in Italy, notably
Fracastoro (1483-1553), Fabio Colonna (1567-
c. 1645) and Nicolaus Steno (1638-c. 1687), a
Danish anatomist, professor in Padua, advanced
the still embryonic science of palgeontology and
set forth the principle of comparison of fossil
w^ith living forms. But these anticipations of some
of the well-known modern principles were com-
pelled to defer to prevailing religious or tradi-
tional beliefs.
It is difficult to believe that Leonardo da Vinci
did not exert a strong influence upon the natural
philosophy of his times. Colvin says of him:^
History tells of no man gifted in the same degree
as Leonardo was at once for art and science. . . .
The thirst for knowledge had first been aroused in
him by the desire of perfecting the images of beauty
and power which it was his business to create. Thence
there grew upon him the passion of knowledge for its
own sake. In the splendid balance of his nature the
Virgilian longing, rerum cognoscere causas, could
never indeed wholly silence the call to exercise his ac-
tive powers. ... A hundred years before Bacon,
say those who can judge best, he showed a firmer
^Sidney Colvin: Leonardo da Vinci. Enc. Brit., vol. 16, pp.
462-3.
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 121
grasp of the principles of experimental science than
13acon showed, fortified by a far wider range of
actual experiment and observation. Not in his actual
conclusions, though many of these point with sur-
prising accuracy in the direction of truths estab-
lished by later generations, but in the soundness, the
wisdom, the tenacity of his methods lies his great
title to glory. Had the Catholic reaction not fatally
discouraged the pursuit of the natural sciences in
Italy, had Leonardo even left behind him any one
with zeal and knowledge enough to extract from the
mass of his MSS. some portion of his labours in those
sciences and give them to the world, an incalculable
impulse would have been given to all those enquiries
by which mankind has since been striving to under-
stand the laws of its being and control the conditions
of its environment, — to mathematics and astronomy,
to mechanics, hydraulics, and physics generally, to
geology, geography, and cosmology, to anatomy and
the sciences of life.
Bruno {154<S-1Q00), Suarez (1548-1617)
But not for almost another hundred years was
this scientific impulse to burst its bounds, when
the nascent spirit of inquiry claimed its first mar-
tyr in the person of the great Italian philoso-
pher of the Renaissance, Giordano Bruno. It
is a striking coincidence that the same year
(1548) witnessed the birth of the most extreme
rationalist and the most extreme conservative
among the theologians in science: Suarez the
122 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
conservative checked the whole tide of evolution-
ary thought of Aristotle and previous theologians
and formulated the special-creation idea that
dominated both theology and science until the
time of Darwin; Bruno the rationalist main-
tained the natural philosophy of Aristotle, of
Lucretius, and of the Arabs, and in a measure
developed a natural philosophy of his own, ad-
herence to which finally cost him his life at the
stake (1600). Bruno was the last exponent of
the idea of Evolution along Greek ideas of
thought; the long period of the direct influence
of Greek philosophy on theology ended with him.
Giordano Bruno was born near Nola in the
village of Cicala. Little is known of his life;
christened Fihppo, he took the name Giordano
on entering the religious order of the Dominicans
at Naples, in his fifteenth year. A treatise on the
ark of Noah is attributed to him.^ In his biology
Bruno imbibed the diverse influences of the
Greeks, of Lucretius, of Arabic philosophy, and
of Oriental mysticism, and evolved a highly
speculative and vague system of natural philoso-
phy. From the physics of the Stoics he derived
the idea that all living beings had a greater or
less share of the Universal Force, a force which
leads to steps corresponding in the world of or-
ganized beings to a gradated scale of develop-
1 See Enc. Brit., vol. 4, p. 686.
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 123
ment (like the scale of Aristotle, or, later, of
Bonnet, in which each form was a starting-point
for the next). Therefore Bruno saw in plants
the latent forces of the generation of animals ; in
stones, the collective kinds of plants ; in man, the
whole lower creation. Guttler traces Bruno's
philosophy to Nicolas of Cusa and characterizes
it as monistic. Lange and Erdmann more accu-
rately speak of his system as pantheistic.
In profession, but not in method, Bruno was
scientific. He followed Aristotle, and forestalled
Bacon, in teaching induction, one of his chief
maxims being that ^'the investigation of Nature
in the unbiassed light of reason is our only
guide to truth'' Bruno's admirers have recently
claimed for him anticipation not only of the
method of Bacon but of the 'perfection' doctrine
and the theory of monads of Leibnitz, and point
out in his physical teachings the theory of the
center of gravity of planets, of the elliptical or-
bits of comets, and the perfect sphericity of the
earth.
By selecting certain passages from his profuse
writings we may credit Bruno with teaching
some elements of the evolution idea; but we
must first see how such special passages are en-
larged by others, in order to reach Bruno's real
conceptions. In estimating his originality, we
must be familiar with Greek, Arabic, and Orien-
124 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
tal writings, from which he drew as an omnivo-
rous reader. Some of the passages quoted by
Brinton and others give a very misleading idea
of the real extent of Bruno's grasp, for we un-
consciously read into them our present knowl-
edge, as where he says: "The mind of man dif-
fers from that of lower animals and of plants,
not in quality but in quantity. . . . Each indi-
vidual is the resultant of innumerable individ-
uals. . . . Each species is the starting-point for
the next. . . . No individual is the same today
as yesterday."
Bruno, with Aristotle, finds that this eternal
change is not purposeless, but is ever toward
the elimination of defects; hence his alleged an-
ticipation of the optimism of Leibnitz and of the
theory of the perfectibility of man. As to 'mat-
ter' and 'form,' we again find him following
Aristotle in some passages ; with him, form seems
to stand for the ultimate law of the objective
universe, yet matter is not complete in its forms,
because "Nature produces its objects not by sub-
traction and addition, but only by separation and
unfolding. Thus taught the wisest men among
the Greeks; and Moses, in describing the origin
of life, introduces the universal efficient Being
thus speaking: 'Let the earth bring forth the liv-
ing creature ; let the waters bring forth the living
creature that hath life' — as though he said — 'let
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 125
matter bring them forth.' " But we find an im-
portant departure from Aristotle where Bruno
conceives of matter not as potential but as actual
and active.
There is thus great room for difference of opin-
ion as to how far Bruno was an evolutionist in
our sense, and we find different authors taking
different standpoints according to their greater
or less appreciation of the essential elements of
the evolution idea. Lasson holds that Bruno was
a follower of Empedocles and therein a prophet
of Darwinism, in the capacity of perfection and
the unity of development of organic life. Krause,
in his biography of Erasmus Darwin, maintains
that Bruno held merely to the identity of the
human and the animal souls, without actually
conceiving their unity of origin.
Here again Aristotelianism enters into Bru-
no's thought, for while he conceived all Evo-
lution as based on endless changes in matter,
he describes this movement simply as the out-
ward expression of an indwelling soul. This in-
telligence is displayed in three grades, which
correspond with the steps in the scale of devel-
opment, because we are free to suppose that "to
the sound of the harp of the Universal Apollo
(the World Spirit), the lower organisms are
called by stages to higher, and the lower stages
are connected by intermediate forms with the
126 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
higher. . . . Every species is first shown in Na-
ture before it passes into hfe, thus each becomes
the starting-point for the next; as in the expan-
sion of the form of the embryo there is an un-
broken continuity into the species of man or
beast." At other points he speaks as if this soul
or intelhgence was conceived in a dualistic sense,
for he says: "The perfecting power of intelh-
gence does not rest upon another or upon more,
but upon the whole."
In geology, Bruno appears as a uniformi-
tarian, and describes the gradual changes in Na-
ture, not as cataclysmal, but as following their
natural course. Thus, he argues against the short
six thousand years of the Biblical chronology.
This was also not original with Bruno; for he
was preceded in the tenth century by Arabic ge-
ologists, as seen in the quotation from Avicenna.
It is highly probable that Bruno drew upon the
Arabs for many other of his scientific ideas.
Finally we may quote a passage from Bruno's
satire. Cabala of the Pegasan Horse, published
in 1585, a dialogue between Sabasto and Onorio,
in which Bruno affirms the Oriental doctrine of
metempsychosis and explains his views of the de-
velopment of organic life. He first compares the
animal and human intellect and contrasts mon-
keys with men in their absence of tool-bearing
hands. Speaking of the tongue of the parrot as
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 127
fitted to utter any sort of sound, he says that the
parrot lacks perception and memory equal and
akin to man's; he touches upon the instincts of
the parrot and opposes the idea that they are
altogether different from the intelligence of man ;
then he passes on to say that the lower animals
are directed by an unerring intelligence, yet that
this is not identical with the efficient universal in-
telligence which directs and causes all to under-
stand. Thus, "above all animals there is an active
sense; that is, one which causes all different sen-
sations, and by which all are actually sensitive;
and one active intellect, the one, that is, which
causes all different understanding and by which
all are actively intelligent." He goes on to say
that out of the same corporeal material are made
all bodies, and then occurs the following para-
graph : "I add this — 'that through diverse causes,
habits, orders, measures, and numbers of body
and spirit, there are diverse temperaments and
natures, different organs are produced, and dif-
ferent genera of things appear.' "
Francisco Suarez was almost the last emi-
nent representative of Scholasticism. Mivart, in
his Genesis of Species, places him, among the
post-mediaeval theologians of high authority, as
one "who has a separate section in opposition to
those who maintain the distinct creation of the
128 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
various kinds — or substantial forms — of organic
life."
We thus derive the erroneous impression that
Suarez should be classed with Augustine and
Aquinas as a teacher of creation by evolution;
but Huxley in a brilhant article^ completely dis-
misses this enrolment with the Evolutionists, and
sets him up as a rigid Special Creationist. He
was, in fact, the third great theologian to treat
of Creation, and yet, as he differed radically in
his interpretation of Genesis from both Augus-
tine and Aquinas, he may be considered one of
the founders of the special-creation view as or-
thodox teaching upon the origin of species — the
teaching which more than any other has led to
the schism among the philosophers of Xature.
Mivart quotes a number of passages showing that
Suarez gave this matter considerable thought.
As was later done by Linnaeus, Suarez pointed
out that there might be some new or post-crea-
tion species which were generated by the com-
mingling of original species; he considered the
mule and the leopard as instances of this kind,
Huxley also shows that Suarez devotes a spe-
cial treatise, Tractatus de Opere sex Dierum, to
the discussion of all the problems which arise
out of the literal Mosaic account of Creation; he
IT. H. Huxley: Mr. Darwin's Critics. The Contemporary Re-
view, 1871.
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 129
here reviews the opinions of Philo and Augustine
upon these questions and distinctly rejects them.
He suggests that the failure of Aquinas to con-
trovert Augustine's interpretation arose from his
deference to the authority of Augustine, and he
maintains that the 'day' of Scripture was a nat-
ural day of twenty-four hours, not a period of
time as Augustine considered it; he further de-
clares that the entire work of Creation took place
in the space of six solar days. Huxley concludes :
As regards the creation of animals and plants,
therefore, it is clear that Suarez, so far from dis-
tinctly asserting derivative creation, denies it as dis-
tinctly and positively as he can; that he is at much
pains to refute St. Augustin's opinions ; that he does
not hesitate to regard the faint acquiescence of St.
Thomas Aquinas in the views of his brother-saint as
a kindly subterfuge on the account of Divus Thomas ;
and that he affirms his o^\Tl view to be that which is
supported by the authority of the Fathers of the
Church.
Mivart replied^ to Huxley that while Suarez
rejected Augustine's view as to the fact of crea-
tion, he testifies as to the validity of the princi-
ples on which the doctrine of derivative creation
reposes. Yet Mivart is not able to controvert
Huxley's exposition of Suarez's real opinions; he
iMivart: Lessons from Nature, 1876, p. 447.
130 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
does controvert Huxley's statement that Suarez
is a leading authority, and quotes Cardinal Nor-
ris and others upon the views of Augustine, Al-
bertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas to the
effect that these teachers are still the standards
upon these questions.
The truth is that all classes of theologians de-
parted from the original philosophical and Aris-
totelian standards of some of the Fathers of the
Church, and that Special Creation became the
universal and orthodox theologic teaching from
the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the
nineteenth century.
The Awakening of Science
Before speaking of the philosophers who now
became the custodians of the evolution idea and
of the speculative writers of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, let us glance for a moment
at the general advance of knowledge.
Universities in Europe were founded at the
beginning of the twelfth century, following those
established by the Arabs; Oxford was founded
at the beginning of the thirteenth century. We
have described above (pp. 119-20) the rudi-
ments of palaeontology and of geology as they
appeared in Italian universities of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries and in the brilliant mind
of Leonardo da Vinci.
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 131
During a long i:)eriod all naturalists were
simi)ly compilers. Among these compilers were
Clusius, Rondelet, Belon; finally we find Con-
rad Gesner (1516-1565) writing a complete
bibliography of zoologj^ and leading the natural-
ists of the sixteenth century. About this time
Cesalpin (1519-1603) wrote of vegetable anat-
omy, and there sprang up in Padua the School
of Anatomy of Vesalius (1514-1564) , Fallopius,
and his pupil Fabricius, who in turn taught the
immortal Harvey. In 1619 Harvey discovered
the circulation of the blood and founded embry-
ology. The systematic classification of animals
and plants then arose as a distinct branch in the
writings of Ray (1628-1704), Tournefort, and
Magnol. Ray was the precursor of Linnseus. In
the second half of the seventeenth century and
beginning of the eighteenth, the study of the
smaller organisms began with Leeuwenhoek,
Malpighi, and Swammerdam. "We owe to this
period," says St. Hilaire, "the foundation of
Microscopy; Anatomy enriched and joined to
Physiology ; Comparative Anatomy studied with
care ; Classification placed on a rational and sys-
tematic basis." It was these sciences, especially
the rise of clearer ideas on the nature of species,
which first gave speculation upon Evolution its
modern trend, bringing up the origin and the
mutability of species as two great central ques-
tions.
132 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
During these two progressive centuries there
were three classes of writers who contributed
more or less directly to the foundations of mod-
ern Evolution, before its open exposition by Buf-
fon: first, the Naturalists, among whom few
speculative questions were in vogue, who were
nevertheless really building up the future mate-
rials of thought; second, the Speculative Evo-
lutionists, who gave a free rein to thoroughly
unsound ideas upon the origin of species and re-
vived many of the early Greek notions ; third, the
great Natural Philosophers, such as da Vinci,
Francis Bacon, Descartes, Leibnitz, Hume, end-
ing with the later German school led by Kant,
Lessing, Herder, and Schelling.
Influence of the Natural Philosophers
It is a very striking fact that the basis of our
modern methods of studying the evolution prob-
lem was established not by the early naturalists
nor by the speculative writers, but by the nat-
ural philosophers, especially da Vinci, Bacon,
and Descartes. They alone were upon the main
track of modern thought. It is evident that they
were groping in the dark for a working theory
not only of the interpretation of Nature but of
the evolution of life, and it is remarkable that
they clearly perceived from the outset that the
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 133
point to which observation should be directed was
not the past but tlie present mutabihty of spe-
cies, and further, that this mutabihty was simply
tlie variation of individuals on an extended scale.
Thus Variation was brought into prominence as
the point to which observation should be directed.
This is one of the contributions of the natural
philosophers to the history of the evolution the-
OTV. It seems to have sprung up afresh out of
the advances in biology of the previous century,
for it was something which is not found among
the Greeks. It was Bacon who pointed out the
evidence for Variation in animals and plants,
and the bearing of this upon the production of
new species and upon the gradations of life.
Leibnitz took a second step in indicating that the
evolution of life was a necessary part of a sys-
tem of cosmic philosophy, and although wholly
at sea in his theory of Evolution, he added to the
evidence for it by giving examples of gradations
of character between living and extinct forms, as
proofs of the universal gradation or connection
between species. Thus among these philosophers
we are astonished to find pointed out the grada-
tions of animal types, the facts of variation, and
the bearing of these facts upon the production of
new species, also the analogy between artificial
selection practised by man in producing new
forms and the production of new forms in Na-
ture.
134 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
These were original departures toward mod-
ern biology, in which these writers were thor-
oughly logical and sound and where they were
laying foundations for those observations which
finally led to the establishment of the evolution
theory. Yet it must not be inferred that the evo-
lution of life was a very prominent element in
their philosophy ; it was rather a by-product and
a matter of secondary interest.
In the larger aspect of their teaching, namely,
in the broad question of Evolution itself as the
law of the universe, they found abundant inspi-
ration in Greek literature. Bacon did not put
forth a general evolution system of the universe ;
Descartes and Leibnitz, who were the first to do
so, drew from Greek poetry and philosophy, and
this is true also of all the later philosophers. Kant
and the later German philosophers drew not only
from these sources, but from suggestions found
in contemporary science, from Linnaeus and es-
pecially from Buffon. It is very probable also
that careful search among the earlier naturalists
would reveal an anticipation of some of the prob-
lems which are set forth in Bacon and Leibnitz.
Their first great gift, as we have said, was in
establishing the right trend to observation ; their
second gift was the outcome of their battle for
the principle of natural causation versus super-
naturahsm. From Bacon to Kant, who, it is true,
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 135
wavered in advocating this principle, this was a
theme of the first rank; that is, the operation of
natural causes in the world rather than of the
constant interference of a Creator in his works.
In the doubts which were felt as to natural cau-
sation, we see proofs of the close relations be-
tween the Church, the State, and Science, and
that this principle, as well as that of Evolution,
was under the ban of unorthodoxy.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Three centuries elapsed between Roger Bacon
(1214) and Francis Bacon (1561), the pro-
ponent of the inductive scientific method.
Francis Bacon thought lightly of Greek sci-
ence and of Arabian philosophy. He strongly
condemned the reverence for them as a bar to
progress, and in his sweeping criticisms was far
too severe, as in the following passage*/
Nor must we omit the opinion, or rather proph-
ecy, of an Egyptian priest in regard to the Greeks,
that they would forever remain children, without any
antiquity of knowledge or knowledge of antiquity;
for they certainly have this in common with children,
that they are prone to talking, and incapable of gen-
eration, their wisdom being loquacious and unpro-
ductive of effects. Hence the external signs derived
'^Novum Organum, Book I, Ixxi.
136 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
from the origin and birthplace of our philosophy are
not favorable.
He was especially severe upon Aristotle, in
whom he undoubtedly found his famous princi-
ples of induction. He failed to appreciate Greek
suggestiveness, and little foresaw the influence
it was destined to exert in framing modern Evo-
lution. He points out the art of indication, an
*art' which substantially implies the use of the
working hypothesis :
For indication proceeds (1) from experiment to
experiment, or (2) from experiment to axioms,
which may again point out new experiments. The
former we call learned experience, and the latter the
interpretation of Nature, Novum Organum, or new
machine of mind.
That Bacon, as early as 1620, fully grasped
the wealth of knowledge which could be gained
from observation, experiment, and induction is
shown repeatedly in the course of his works.
Bacon was one of the first, if not the first,
to raise the problem of the mutability of species
as possibly a result of the accumulation of varia-
tions; this is shown in the following passages,
which bear especially upon the question of spe-
cies. He speaks,^ in the first place, of variations
of an extreme kind:
1 Novum Organum^ Book II, Section 29.
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 137
In the eiglitli rank of prerogative instances, we
will place deviating instances, such as the errors of
nature, or strange and monstrous objects, in which
nature deviates and turns from the ordinary course.
For the errors of nature differ from singular in-
stances, inasmuch as the latter are the miracles of
species, the former of individuals. Their use is much
the same, for they rectify the understanding in op-
position to habit, and reveal common forms. For
with regard to these, also, we must not desist from
inquiry, till we discern the cause of the deviation. The
cause does not, however, in such cases rise to a regu-
lar form, but only in the latent process toward such
a form. For he who is acquainted with the paths of
nature, will more readily observe her deviations ; and
vice versdy he who has learned her deviations will be
able more accurately to describe her paths.
Having thus spoken of deviations or varia-
tions, and of the necessity of understanding the
normal type in order to detect the variation, also
of the desirability of studying the cause of the
variation, Bacon^ proceeds to assert that it is pos-
sible for man to produce variations experimen-
tally, and shows that living objects are well
adapted to experimental work:
They differ again from singular instances, by be-
ing much more apt for practice and the operative
branch. For it would be very difficult to generate new
species, but less so to vary known species, and thus
138 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
produce many rare and unusual results. The pas-
sage from the miracles of nature to those of art is
easy; for if nature be once seized in her variations,
and the cause be manifest, it will be easy to lead her
by art to such deviation as she was first led to by
chance ; and not only to that but others, since devia-
tions on the one side lead and open the way to others
in every direction.
In the above passage Bacon points out that in
artificial selection we take advantage of the
chance variations of Nature and accumulate
them. In the next passage he points out the pres-
ence of transitional forms in Nature between
two types (Section 30) :
In the ninth rank of prerogative instances, we will
place bordering instances, which we are also wont to
term participants. They are such as exhibit those
species of bodies which appear to be composed of two
species, or to be the rudiments between one and the
other. They may well be classed with the singular or
heteroclite instances; for in the whole system of
things, they are rare and extraordinary. Yet from
their dignity, they must be treated of and classed
separately, for they point out admirably the order
and constitution of things, and suggest the causes of
the number and quality of the more common species
in the universe, leading the understanding from that
which is, to that which is possible. We have examples
of them in moss, which is something between putres-
cence and a plant ; in some comets, which hold a place
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 139
between stars and ignited meteors; in flying fishes,
between fishes and birds; and in bats, between birds
and quadrupeds.
Bacon also observed "that plants sometimes
degenerate to the point of changing into other
plants," but so far as I know gave no grounds of
support for this opinion. These quotations show
that even at the beginning of the seventeenth cen-
tury the mutability of species was a live ques-
tion which was being more or less discussed, and
that mutability was seen in its modern bearings
upon Evolution.
Bacon went further, and in his Nova Atlantis
we find that he projects the establishment of a
scientific institution to be devoted to the prog-
ress of the natural sciences, for experiments upon
the metamorphoses of organs and observations
upon what causes species to vary, and for re-
searches which would reveal the manner in which
species had multiplied and become diversified in
a state of Nature. After three centuries this
project is materializing so that one of our new
experimental stations might well be called the
Baconian Institute of Experimental Evolution.
The central idea of the grand evolution of life
is frequently implied rather than clearly ex-
pressed in Bacon's writings. He differed from
Descartes and later philosophers in proposing
140 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
the method by which the natural system of the
universe could be ascertained, rather than in
speculating upon the system itself.
If we are to judge Bacon himself by his max-
ims and aphorisms, no place would be too high
for him; but judging him by his actual re-
searches and practices, and carefully estimating
his real influence upon posterity, we must place
him below the physiologist Harvey (1578-1657) ,
discoverer of the circulation of the blood, whose
brilliant application of the inductive method in
science he is said to have ignored.
Descartes (1596-1650)
Rene Descartes threw off the yoke of scho-
lasticism in France, as Bacon had in England.
His thought took an entirely different turn,
rather the philosophical than the scientific. In
his Principes de la Philosophie, published in
1637, he cautiously advanced his belief that the
physical universe is a mechanism, and that as
such it is, or finally will be, explicable upon
physical principles.
Notwithstanding the elaborate disguise which fear
of the powers that were led Descartes to throw over
his real opinions, it is impossible to read the Prin-
cipes de la Philosophie without acquiring the convic-
tion that this great philosopher held that the physi-
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 141
cal world and all things in it, whether living or not
living, have originated by a process of evolution,
due to the continuous operation of purely physical
causes, out of a primitive relatively formless matter.
As Buffon has well said: "L'idee de ramener I'ex-
plication de tons les phenomenes a des principes
mecaniques est assurement grande et belle, ce pas est
le plus hardi qu'on pent f aire en philosophic, et c'est
Descartes qui I'a f ait."^
Buffon credits Descartes with taking here the
most daring step possible in philosophy, in at-
tempting to explain all things upon principles of
natural law. There is no doubt that at the time
Descartes took this step it required even greater
moral courage than his to break away from the
prevailing dogmas as to Special Creation. In
a passage upon creation, which Huxley^ aptly
terms a singular exhibition of force and weak-
ness, Descartes wavers between his conviction as
to the true order of things and the prevailing
teaching.
He marks the difference between the natural
order of gradual development and the unnatural
doctrine of sudden creation, which at the time
had become the prevailing and prescribed teach-
ing. Further, he intimates that all things are or-
dered by natural laws:
lEnc. Brit.: Evolution, vol. 10, p. 31. Huxley's and Sully's ex-
position in 9th edition is retained by Mitchell.
142 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
All the same, if we can imagine a few intelligible
and simple principles upon which the stars, and
earth, and all the visible world might have been pro-
duced (although we well know that it has not been
produced in this fashion), we reach a better under-
standing of the nature of all things than if we de-
scribe simply how things now are, or how we believe
them to have been, created. Because I believe I have
discovered such principles, I shall endeavour to ex-
plain them.
Leibnitz (1646-1716)
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz, the first of the
great philosophers of Germany, advocated in his
writings two ideas which exerted a great but
partly misleading influence in biology. The first
was his doctrine of Continuity, and the second,
his doctrine of Perfectibility in the Monads. The
law of Perfectibility is said to have been sug-
gested by Bruno, but as applied to the animal
creation certainly came more or less directly from
Aristotle. It is surprising to find how Leibnitz'
principle of Continuity adapted itself to the idea
of evolution of organic beings. In part from ob-
servations of his own, and probably in part in-
fluenced by Aristotle, Leibnitz expressed as fol-
lows the principle of Continuity as applied to
life: "All natural orders of beings present but
a single chain, in which the different classes of
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 143
animals, like so many rings, are so closely united
that it is not possible either by observation or
imagination to determine where one ends or be-
gins."
He was very familiar with both Bacon and
Descartes, and by the former had probably had
his attention called to the matter of Variation.
Huxley quotes from the Protogce (xxvi) a pas-
sage which proves that Leibnitz also had his own
thoughts and observations upon the mutability of
species. He is speaking of the fossil Ammonites
related to the living nautilus, and, after noting
the infinite variations in their shells and the gra-
dations which are presented among these forms,
says :^
Some are surprised that there are to be seen every-
where in rocks such objects as one might seek for in
vain elsewhere in the known world, or certainly, at
least, in his own neighborhood. Such are the horns of
Ammon [Ammonites], which are reckoned a kind of
Nautilus, although they are said to differ always
both in form and size, sometimes indeed being found
a foot in diam.eter, from all those animal natures
which the sea exhibits. Yet who has thoroughly
searched those hidden recesses or subterranean
depths ? And how many animals hitherto unknown to
us has a new world to offer ? Indeed it is credible that
by means of such great changes [of habitat] even
the species of animals are often changed.
i/6id. Translation of Latin text.
144 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
His principle of Continuity, which is very close
to the modern conception of Evolution, was in
another passage expressed as follows — showing
conclusively that he held very positive views as
to the evolution of life and even of the gradual
ascent of man through species linking him with
the apes:
All advances by degrees in Nature, and nothing
by leaps, and this law as applied to each, is part of
my doctrine of Continuity. Although there may exist
in some other world species intermediate between
Man and the Apes, Nature has thought it best to
remove them from us, in order to establish our supe-
riority beyond question. I speak of intermediate spe-
cies, and by no means limit myself to those leading
to Man. I strongly approve of the research for
analogies ; plants, insects, and Comparative Anatomy
will increase these analogies, especially when we are
able to take advantage of the microscope more than
at present.
In such passages he appears, like Bacon, to have
especially directed research to those natural gra-
dations between species which have become the
pillars of Evolution.
Leibnitz' doctrine of Force as the ultimate
reality aUied him to Descartes ; he regarded the
animal and even the human body as machines,
even in their smallest parts. But his speculative
teachings, as in part a revival of Aristotle's, cer-
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 145
tainly had an entirely different trend from those
of Bacon and Descartes. He stimulated the
speculations of Diderot, Maupertuis, Bonnet,
Robinet, and others of the speculative writers;
his principle of Continuity doubtless directly or
indirectly influenced the natural philosopher
Goethe. In short, he founded a 'school' with his
continuity doctrines, and his philosophy ruled the
schools of Germany for nearly a century.^
In those days of few printed books and con-
centrated thought, scattered suggestions gen-
erated into opinions and theories. They are the
minor features of the environment of the evolu-
tion idea. Thus we find Spinoza (1632-1677)
taking ground similar to that of Leibnitz, but
more firm, in regard to natural causation: "The
natural laws and principles by which all things
are made and some forms are changed into others,
are everywhere and through all time the same."
About 1661, it is believed, Spinoza composed his
SJiort Treatise on God, on Man, and His Well-
being.
The term "Nature" is put more into the fore-
ground in the Treatise, a point which might be urged
as evidence of Bruno's influence — the dialogues,
moreover, being specially concerned to establish the
unity, infinity and self-containedness of Nature ; but
iCompare W. R. Sorley: Leibnitz, Enc. Brit., vol. 16, pp. 386-90.
146 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
the two opposed Cartesian attributes, thought and
extension, and the absolutely infinite substance whose
attributes they are — substance constituted by in-
finite attributes — appear here as in the Ethics.^
To Pascal (1623-1662) was attributed by
Geoffroy St. Hilaire a thoroughly evolutionistic
view as to the origin of animals and plants; yet
diligent search by other authors has failed to lo-
cate this in any of his writings. In the close of
a treatise upon optics Newton (1642-1727)
pointed out the uniformity of structure which
pervades all animal types. Hume (1711-1776)
also concluded that the world might have been
generated rather than created by the activity of
its own inherent principles, and Leslie Stephens
points out that he also considered the principle
of the ^survival of the fittest.'
But the final and the fullest expression of
Evolution in philosophical literature is found in
Kant.
Kant (1724-1804)
Emmanuel Kant was born seventeen years
after Bufi:*on and Linn^us, and therefore thought
and wrote after natural history had made very
great advances. The ideas of selection, adapta-
lA. S. Pringle-Pattison : Spinoza. Enc. Brit., vol. 25, p. 689.
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 147
tion, environment, and inheritance, which are at-
tributed to him as original by Haeckel, are also
found in the works of Euffon. Buffon's most
extreme views were expressed between 1760 and
1770, while Kant's extreme views were expressed
between 1757 and 1771.
We owe to Schultze a very full exposition of
all the passages in the writings of the great Ko-
nigsberg philosopher which bear upon the evolu-
tion theor^^ In his earlier years Kant published
a work (1755), entitled Universal Natural His-
tory and Theory of the Heavens, embracing an
attempt to reconcile ^^ewton and Leibnitz, or Na-
ture from the mechanical and teleological stand-
points. At this time he was attracted by the
mechanism of Lucretius. Haeckel points out that
in this work Kant took a very advanced position
as to the domain of natural causation, or, as
Haeckel terms it, 'mechanism in the domain of
life,' while in his later work (1790) , his Criticism
of the Teleological Faculty of Judgment^ he
took a much more conservative position. In the
former, he considers all Nature under the domain
of natural causes, while in the latter he divides
Nature into the 'inorganic,' in which natural
causes prevail, and the 'organic,' in which the ac-
tive teleological principle prevails. There was,
therefore, in Kant's later work a cleft between
primeval matter and the domain of life; for in
148 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
the latter he assumed the presence of final causes
acting for definite ends. As Haeckel says:^
After having quite correctly maintained the ori-
gin of organic forms out of raw matter by mechani-
cal laws (in the manner of crystallization), as well
as a gradual development of the different species
by descent from one common original parent, Kant
adds, "But he (the archaeologist of Nature, that is
the palaeontologist), must for this end ascribe to the
common mother an organization ordained purposely
with a view to the needs of all her offspring, other-
wise the possibility of suitability of form in the
products of the animal and vegetable kingdoms can-
not be conceived at all."
We cannot here follow out all the reasons for
Kant's change of view from his earlier to his
later years ; we simply see that he was appalled
by the impossibility of human investigation ever
reaching an explanation of the laws which have
governed the derivation of all organic beings,
from polyps to men; he declared that this doc-
trine (of Evolution) was compatible with the
mechanical conception of Nature, although no
natural science can attain it; it would therefore
remain a daring flight of reason. In a striking
passage on the limits of our knowledge, he says :^
'^The History of Creation^ 1892, vol. I, p. 108.
2See Haeckel: The History of Creation, vol. I, 1892, p. 109.
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 149
It is quite certain that wc cannot become suf-
ficiently acquainted with organized creatures and
their hidden potentialities by aid of purely mechani-
cal natural principles, much less can we explain
them ; and this is so certain, that we may boldly as-
sert that it is absurd for man even to conceive such
an idea, or to hope that a Newton may one day arise
able to make the production of a blade of grass com-
prehensible, according to natural laws ordained by
no intention ; such an insight we must absolutely deny
to man.
As Haeckel observes, Darwin rose up as
Kant's Newton, for he offered an explanation
of the production and of the development of
those very structures and adaptations in Nature,
which remained wholly unexplained until 1858.
Haeckel expresses evident disappointment at
Kant's position; yet this position may be re-
garded as raising Kant higher in the scale of
science, if not of philosophy. If he could not
even conceive of any natural law whereby these
beautiful adaptations of Nature could be ex-
plained, he was not justified in making a bold
assumption of the existence of such a law. The
feeling that Newton and other physical philoso-
phers had supplied the inorganic world with its
regulating principles would have made it logical
for Kant, like Descartes, to carry his reasoning
a step further into the world of life. But his logic
150 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
and philosophy were held back by his scientific
instinct for evidence, and evidence was then
wholly lacking, for even the explanation offered
by Lamarck was not available.
Kant was undoubtedly familiar with the writ-
ings of Buff on and Maupertuis ; he alludes to
them both, and in his second work, prepared in
1757 but not published until much later, it is evi-
dent that his standpoint toward Evolution was
very similar to that of Buff on in what we call his
'middle period.' Later, in 1763, he parallels
Buffon in tracing back all the higher forms of
life to simpler elementary forms. As to the origin
of man, he traces the changes produced in man
by migration, differences of climate and the like,
and, like Buffon,^ the principle of 'degeneration'
(denaturee) from originally and perfectly cre-
ated types of species. In 1771 he also brings
man into the ranks of Nature, and alludes to his
former quadrupedal attitude, here agreeing with
Buffon and Helvetius. In his study upon the
races of man we also find that he expresses the
principle of survival of the fittest, as applied to
groups of organisms, very much in the form
in which it had been stated by Buffon. In this
connection he quotes Maupertuis. He also sees
the force of accidental variation and artificial
1 As pointed out in Chapter IV, Buffon first advanced belief
in the mutability of species in the year 1761, when he used the
terms denaturee and degeneration.
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 151
selection in the production of certain external
colors.
Kant's comprehensive view of cosmic Evolu-
tion and his hesitation as to the problem of causa-
tion are summed up in the following remarkable
passage (1790) , quoted by Haeckel:^
It is desirable to examine the great domain of
organized beings by means of a methodical compara-
tive anatomy, in order to discover whether we may
not find in them something resembling a system,
and that too in connection with their mode of gen-
eration, so that we may not be compelled to stop
short with a mere consideration of forms as they are
— which gives us no insight into their generation —
and need not despair of gaining a full insight into
this department of Nature. The agreement of so
many kinds of animals in a certain common plan of
structure, which seems to be visible not only in their
skeletons, but also in the arrangement of the other
parts — so that a wonderfully simple typical form,
by the shortening and lengthening of some parts,
and by the suppression and development of others,
might be able to produce an immense variety of
species — gives us a ray of hope, though feeble, that
here perhaps some result may be obtained, by the
application of the principle of the mechanism of
nature, without which, in fact, no science can exist.
This analogy of forms (in so far as they seem to
have been produced in accordance with a common
prototype, notwithstanding their great variety)
'^Loc. cit., pp. 106-7.
152 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
strengthens the supposition that they have an actual
blood-relationship, due to derivation from a com-
mon parent; a supposition which is arrived at by
observation of the graduated approximation of one
class of animals to another, beginning with the one
in which the principle of purposiveness seems to be
most conspicuous, namely man, and extending down
to the polyps, and from these even down to mosses
and lichens, and arriving finally at raw matter, the
lowest stage of nature observable by us. From this
raw matter and its forces, the whole apparatus of
Nature seems to have been derived according to me-
chanical laws (such as those which resulted in the
production of crystals) ; yet this apparatus, as seen
in organic beings, is so incomprehensible to us, that
we feel ourselves compelled to conceive for it a dif-
ferent principle. But it would seem that the archae-
ologist of Nature is at liberty to regard the great
Family of creatures (for as a Family we must con-
ceive it, if the above-mentioned continuous and con-
nected relationship has a real foundation) as hav-
ing sprung from the immediate results of her earliest
revolutions, judging from all the laws of their mech-
anisms known to or conjectured by him.
What a connecting link between all past and
future evolutionary thought lies in this great
passage! We can trace the influence upon
Emmanuel Kant of every earlier philosopher
from Aristotle down, as well as of the leading
naturalists of his own times, and recognize the
problems which have faced every later one.
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 153
Lessing (1729-1781), Herder (1744-1803)
Lessing's views of cosmology included the
doctrine of a law of development w^hich embraced
all Nature and which led him also to the idea of
a graduated scale of organisms.
Johann Gottfried Herder was a student of
Kant in Konigsberg between 1762 and 1764. We
have seen that Kant's earliest contribution to
the idea of Evolution was pubhshed in 1755, so
that it is probable that Herder came under the
influence of Kant's earlier views. As shown by
Barenbach, who has made a special study of this
side of his philosophy in his Herder als V organ-
ger Darwin s. Herder was less cautious than his
master, and appears almost as a literal prophet
of the modern natural philosophy.
In a general way Herder upholds the doctrine
of the transformation of the lower and higher
forms of life, of a continuous transformation
from lower to higher types, and of the law of
perfectibility. "Every combination of force and
form," he says, "is neither stability nor retro-
gression, but progress. Take off the outer shell
and there is no death in Nature. Every distur-
bance marks the transfer to a higher type." In
his Ideen zur Geschichte der Menschheit, pub-
lished in Tubingen in 1806, we find the following
passage :
154 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
A certain unity of type pervades all the different
forms of life, like a main type which can display the
widest variations. Similarities of external and, still
more, of internal, structure pervade all the land ani-
mals and are repeated in man. The amphibia, birds,
fishes, insects, water animals, depart in widening
degrees from this main type, which is lost in the
plant and inorganic creation. Our vision reaches no
further, but all these transfers render it not im-
probable that in the series of extinct forms the same
type, in a ruder and simpler form, may have pre-
vailed. We can, therefore, assume that, according
to their nearness to man, all beings have their
greater or less likeness to him, and that the nature
of all life seems to conform to a main single plas-
ticity of organization.
We see here that Herder clearly formulated
the doctrine of unity of type which prevailed
among all the evolutionists of the period immedi-
ately following.
Schelling (1775-1854)
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling at the
age of twenty published his Ideen zur einer
Philosophie der Natur, Here he first unfolded
his ideas of the philosophy of Nature, Kant
having spoken of the science of Nature. One
section of his philosophy was followed and de-
veloped by Oken, but Schelling was greatly
THE EVOLUTION IDEA 155
admired also by Kielmeyer, and he undoubtedly
exercised great influence upon Goethe. Isidore
St. Hilaire pays him a high tribute, and speaks
at length of the admiration felt for Schelling in
France ; he places him midway between the gen-
eral philosopher, typified by the more metaphysi-
cal writers, and the philosopher of natural ob-
jects, such as Geoffroy St. Hilaire. Schelling
independently arrived at the conclusion of Kiel-
meyer that all the functions of life are but the
diverse modifications of a single force.
We here meet with a natural culmination of
the progress of the evolution idea among the
natural philosophers, caused by the departure of
Schelling and Herder from induction and ob-
servation.
Schelling's method was purely deductive, and
he sought in deduction the main sources of
human knowledge. At the point of empiricism,
where according to Cuvier, science ends, he held
that true science begins. By this he meant, that
if the human reason can question and answer
upon its own existence and upon its relations to
the Creator, it can also answer upon all creation ;
it can comprehend and reconstruct the order of
the universe. "To philosophize upon Nature, it is
to create Nature."
Because the hypothesis springs from the mind
and is merely tested by experiment, he places the
156 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
direct fruits of hypothesis or deductive science
above inductive science. This might be termed a
reversion to Greek natural philosophy or meth-
ods of thought brilliant but unproductive of
fixed results.
Successively the natural philosophers Des-
cartes, Leibnitz and Kant laid afresh secure
foundations for the idea of evolution of life, in-
cluding that of man himself, and paved the way
for the natural philosophy of Linnaeus and of
Buffon, who during the second half of the eigh-
teenth century in turn laid the true foundations
in observation for the work of Darwin in the
second half of the nineteenth century.
IV
THE EVOLUTIONISTS OF THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Die Idee der Metamorphose ist eine hochst ehrwiirdige,
aber zugleich hochst gefahrliche Gabe von oben. Die fiihrt
ins Formlose, zerstort das Wissen, lost es auf. — Goethe.
These speculative views [Lamarck's] had already been,
in a great degree, anticipated by Delametherie [de Maillet]
in his Telliamedf and by several modern writers, so that
the tables were completely turned on the philosophers of
antiquity, with whom it was a received maxim, that created
things were always most perfect when they came first from
the hands of their Maker, and that there was a tendency to
progressive deterioration in sublunary things when left to
themselves —
omnia fatis
In pejus ruere, ac retro sublapsa referri.
So deeply was the faith of the ancient schools of phi-
losophy imbued with this doctrine, that to check this uni-
versal proneness to degeneracy, nothing less than the re-
intervention of the Deity was thought adequate ; and it was
held, that thereby the order, excellence, and pristine energy
of the moral and physical world had been repeatedly re-
stored.— Lyell.
THE EVOLUTIONISTS OF THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
The Speculative Evolutionists: Duret, Kircher, de Mail-
let, de Maupertuis, Diderot, Bonnet, Robinet, Oken — The
Great Naturalists: Linnaeus, Buffon, Erasmus Darwin.
BESIDES the great natural philosophers be-
tween the times of Bacon and of Kant who
regenerated the evolution idea on the sound basis
of observation, we distinguish during the latter
part of the seventeenth and the w hole of the eigh-
teenth century two other classes of evolutionists :
first, the speculative writers from Duret to Oken,
partly philosophers, partly naturalists, partly of
other professions, who resuscitated some of the
crude, as well as some of the valuable scientific,
hypotheses of the Greeks ; and second, the great
naturalists of the eighteenth century, who, with
the philosophers, laid the real foundations of the
modern evolution idea.
The Speculatrte Evolutionists (1609-1851)
Not yet complete are the lists of purely specu-
lative writers who toyed with the evolution idea.
Among the curiosities of evolution literature
may be included the works of Duret, the mayor
159
160 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
of a town in France, also of Kircher and Bon-
nami, two priests. Of greater interest are the
speculations of Maupertuis, a mathematician
and astronomer ; of Diderot, the political writer ;
of Bonnet, the eminent naturalist and author of
the 'evolution' (emboitement) of the germ hy-
pothesis; of de Maillet, French consul at Leg-
horn; of Bobinet, one of the popular scientists
of his time; and finally of Oken, professor of
natural history in the University of Zurich dur-
ing the first third of the nineteenth century.
Some surprise may be felt at my placing Oken
in this group, for his Physio-Philosophie and his
Ur-Schleim Theorie are considered by some to
raise him high as a prophet of Modern Evolu-
tion. Yet Oken is a fair exponent of the errors
of purely speculative evolution ; in his 'sea-foam'
and 'spontaneous generation' vagaries we find
him drawing from such an ancient and imagina-
tive authority as Anaximander. In fact, when
we analyze his contributions we find that they
actually represent the last survivals of Greek
Evolution with a veneer of eighteenth-century
observation. When we read him through and
through we see that he is about as truly an
anachronism as old Claude Duret of 1609.
This is more or less true of all these specu-
lators. They were not actually in the main move-
ment of evolution discovery; they were either out
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 161
of date or upon the side tracks of thought. They
can be sharply distinguished from both the
naturahsts and natural philosophers of the eigh-
teenth century in the fact that their speculations
advanced \v itiiout the least support of observa-
tion and without the least deference to inductive
canons. Several of them were very popular
writers, and unchecked speculation was so much
their characteristic that they undoubtedly re-
tarded the development of the true evolution
idea by drawing ridicule upon all genuine search
for a naturalistic explanation of the phenomena
of life.
We find them reviving Greek ideas as to abio-
genesis or the spontaneous origin of life in dif-
ferent forms, as well as in metamorphoses and
transformations, hardly less sudden and fantas-
tic than those of Empedocles. Another source of
their authority is the highly imaginative natural
history hteratuie of the Middle Ages. In all this
chaff there is of course some wheat, as is some-
times the case in speculation unhindered by ob-
servation. Lines of suggestion coming near to
modern thought upon heredity are found espe-
cially in. the essays of Maupertuis, who drew
from Democritus and Anaxagoras. De Maillet
outlined a theory of 'transmission of acquired
characters' in a crude form similar to that of
Empedocles' suggestion regarding the origin of
162 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
the segmented vertebrae of the backbone. Rob-
inet conceived Evolution on a large scale, bor-
rowing a mistaken interpretation of Aristotle.
Oken stated somewhat more distinctly than had
been done previously the hypothesis of the cel-
lular origin of life. As Bonnet was the contem-
porary of Buffon, and Oken lived thirty years
later than Lamarck, the study of this specula-
tive group carries us well beyond the period in
which the sound foundations of Modern Evolu-
tion were laid by the natural philosophers and
great naturalists.
Buret ( -1611), Kircher (1601-1680)
Some of the early biological literature of the
seventeenth century, as pointed out by Ducasse
and Varigny, is quaint. Thus Claude Duret in
his Histoire Admirable des Plantes (1605) is a
direct transformationist. Among other remark-
able tales he describes and figures a tree, "not, it
is true, common in France, but frequently ob-
served in Scotland" ( a country which the Mayor
evidently considered so remote that his observa-
tion would probably not be gainsaid) ; from this
tree leaves are falling; upon one side they strike
the water and slowly transform into fishes, upon
the other they strike land and turn into birds.
Father Bonnami was another writer of similar
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 163
comedies. In the latter part of the century ap-
peared the Mundus Suhtcrrancus^ of Father
Kircher, full of 'authentic observations' of the
same stamp; the worthy priest describes orchids
giving birth to birds and even to very small men ;
this occurs when they touch the ground, where a
sort of fecundation occurs by the spermaticus
humor super fluus humo sparsus — uhi congressu^
foetus est.
De Maillet (1656-1738)
Benoit de Maillet did not pause long over the
dry facts within the reach of contemporary
natural science in his famous Telliamed, In his
earlier years, before this book was written, we
learn that he was a careful student of geology
and palaeontology and that he perceived the true
nature and origin of fossils, as he may have done
by recourse to the Italian pioneers of palaeon-
tology. This in itself entitles him to considerable
credit, when we remember that at the time there
were wide differences of opinion regarding fos-
sils. Natural theology found in them proofs of
the universal deluge, while such an acute thinker
as Voltaire, who scoffed alternately at religion
and science, claimed that the shells on the moun-
tain-tops had been thrown aside by pilgrims on
1 Amsterdam, 1678, 2 vols.
164 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
their journeys to Rome, and that petrified fishes
were the remains of their unfinished repasts.
It was probably his readings among the
Greeks, as well as his own pal^ontological and
geological studies, which gave de Maillet his cen-
tral hyphothesis that all terrestrial animals had
their origin in marine forms by direct descent;
that birds were derived from flying fishes, lions
from sea-lions, and man from Vhomme marin, the
husband of the mermaid ! De Maillet soberly col-
lected all the mythical narratives of the mermaid,
which were abundant in the literature of that
period, then, reasoning that the mermaid must
have espoused, he derived man from the meta-
morphosis of her husband.
These extravagant ideas are mingled with the
rudiments of a biological principle, for de
Maillet, in every case, endeavors to explain this
metamorphosis or transformation by the influ-
ences of environment and habit. The aquatic
organism finds its way upon land; there its new
surroundings of air and herbage and its efforts
to accommodate itself are followed by a series of
modifications. In modern terms, 'it acquires new
characters.' The rash proto-Lamarckian feature
of de Maillet's views is, that he believes these
modifications take place within the short period
of a single life ; they are then transmitted to the
descendants, which do not revert to the aquatic
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 165
form. Thus he transforms into birds the flying
fishes :^
Driven out of the water by the ardor of the chase
or by pursuit, or carried by the wind, they [flying
fishes] might have fallen some distance from the
shore among plants, which, while supplying them
with food, prevented them from returning to the
water. Here, under the influence of the air, their an-
terior fins with their raised membranes transformed
into wings, barbules, and feathers, the skin became
covered with down, the ventral fins became limbs, the
body was remodelled, the neck and the beak became
elongated, and the fish discovered itself a bird.
Huxley speaks as if scant justice had been
done to de Maillet, but we must infer that he has
not thoroughly examined the fantastic metamor-
phoses of which the above is a moderate example.
St. Hilaire more critically and justly says:
Quant a De Maillet, qui fait naitre les oiseaux des
poissons volants, les reptiles des poissons rampants,
et les hommes des tritons, ses reveries, en partie
renouvelees d'Anaximandre, ont leur place marquee,
non da,ns I'histoire de la science, mais dans celle des
aberrations de I'esprit humain.
His fantastic hypotheses of transformism were
expounded in 1749 and republished in 1755; the
^Telliamedy 1755, vol. 2, pp. 166-7.
166 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
letters of the title of his book reversed those of
his own name — Telliamed, ou Entretiens d'un
philosophe indien sur la diminution de la Mer
avec un missionaire fran^ais. The argument is
sustained in a dialogue which is of a thoroughly-
devout character, de Maillet endeavoring to show
that his system conforms to the teachings of
Genesis. He interpreted the days of Genesis as
so many gradual periods or epochs, holding that
the first period of life was preceded by a univer-
sal deluge, and that the origin of life began with
the gradual recession of the sea from the earth.
Here re-enters the favorite Greek doctrine of
pre-existing germs. These germs were predeter-
mined as to the forms to which they should give
rise, but only those forms developed to which the
gradually changing environment was favorable.
Thus, the lower forms of life appeared while the
waters were still in excess, while, as the waters re-
ceded, higher and higher forms arose. But the
scene of development was invariably the sea ; the
germs gave rise to no land forms direct, but land
forms were always developed by transformation
from marine forms. Thus, all organisms were ar-
ranged in two series: first, the aquatic and ma-
rine, springing directly from the germs; and
second, the terrestrial and aerial, arising by
metamorphosis from the marine. In these trans-
formations de Maillet was not embarrassed by
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 167
the fixity of characters or by the fact that no
such metamorphoses had ever been witnessed.
Yet in all this fiction we find buried two sug-
gestions of value. De Maillet claims for the sci-
entist the right to search into Nature direct for
her secrets. He finds in the world proofs that the
days of Genesis were great epochs of time, and
he suggests in his metamorphoses, absurd as they
are, the idea of the modification of organisms by
environment and habit, and the transmission of
these modifications to the descendants; in other
words, he advocates the 'transmission of acquired
adaptations' and is in a limited sense a precursor
of Erasmus Darwin and of Lamarck.
De Maupertuis (1698-1759)
Peter Louis Moreau de Maupertuis was a
French mathematician and astronomer of consid-
erable reputation in his day. As one of the most
prominent members of the eighteenth-century
French circle in Berlin, he was elected president
of the Berlin Academy in 1746.
His contributions to the evolution idea are
pointed out by Perrier.^ We see in them the in-
fluence of Leibnitz, and learn that the reputation
of Maupertuis suffered from his having bor-
rowed other ideas of the German philosopher in
1 Edmond Perrier: La Philosophie Zoologique avant Darwin.
168 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
a paper which he advanced upon the conserva-
tion of energy doctrine. In an obscurely printed
article, Systeme de la Nature: Essai sur la For-
mation des Corps Organises (1751), which has
been unearthed in the course of the present dili-
gent search for all the prophecies of Evolution,
we find that Maupertuis had an original theory
as to the nature of living matter; that he ad-
vanced an hypothesis of generation by heredity
very similar to the pangenesis of Darwin, and
also a theory of the origin of new species. He did
not anticipate the 'evolution' or emboitement of
Bonnet, but advanced an hypothesis of trans-
formism, based upon the idea that all material
particles are in some degree invested with the
psychical properties of the higher organisms —
in other words, the monistic idea. By this as-
sumption of the investment of non-living matter
with the properties of living matter, he was in a
position to readily derive the latter from the for-
mer and to directly unite the animate and inani-
mate worlds. He does not enter into detail as to
the origin of life, but somewhat on the lines of
Democritus and of Buff on, who had published his
similar 'theory of generation' five years earlier
(1746), he carries us a step farther in his ideas
of 'pangenetic' heredity (sections xxxiii-xli) :
The elementary particles which form the embryo
are each drawn from the corresponding structure
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 169
in the parent, and conserve a sort of recollection
(souvenir) of their previous form, so that in the off-
spring they will reflect and reproduce a resemblance
to the'parents. ... If some of the particles happen
to be missing, an imperfect being is formed. . . . If
the elements of the different species are united, a
hybrid is produced. ... In some cases a child re-
sembles one of his ancestors more than even its par-
ents ; in this case we may suppose that the material
particles conserve more strongly the habits they pos-
sessed in the ancestral form.
De Maiipertuis thus gives us an hypothesis
which resembles both the 'pangenesis' of Darwin
and the 'perigenesis' of Haeckel.^
These principles of individual reproduction
and of 'reminiscence' heredity enable de Mau-
pertuis to explain readily the origm of new spe-
cies, and here again we find a striking anticipa-
tion of one modern doctrine of the cause of
fortuitous variation (section xlv) :
We can thus readily explain how new species are
formed ... by supposing that the elementary par-
ticles may not always retain the order which they
present in the parents, but may fortuitously produce
differences, which, multiplying and accumulating,
have resulted in the infinite variety of species which
1 In Haeckel's Perigenesis of the Plcn'tidules, we have a theory
of heredity based upon the assumption that the material heredi-
tary particles preserve a power of repetition of former states
analogous to that witnessed in memory.
170 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARTVTN
we see at the present time. The modifications arising
from different habits cause the varieties thus formed
to be sterile inter se; thus these new species are kept
separate.
Evolution, according to this hypothesis, ad-
vances by fortuity, by the chance combinations
of hereditary elements which produce new char-
acters. Divergence is continued and fostered by
physiological isolation.
Diderot (1713-1784)
Denis Diderot must also be ranked as one of
the speculative contributors to the theory of the
origin of species. This famous man of letters of
the middle of the eighteenth century became an
opponent of the teleological teaching of the day.
He is believed to have contributed to D'Hol-
bach's Systeme de la Nature^ which was charac-
terized as the Bible of Atheism. The passages
quoted below, however, indicate that Diderot was
a theist.
Perrier points out {loc. cit.) that it was an
essay published in 1751 by de Maupertuis, under
an assumed name, which called forth Diderot's
Pensees sur V Interpretation de la Nature, pub-
lished in 1754. He leaves aside the question of
the nature of inorganic material particles, and
begins his system by endowing all organic parti-
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 171
cles with a sort of rudimentary sensibility, which
impels them to constantly change their position
in search of the most favorable position — a form
of the attraction and repulsion doctrine of Em-
pedocles applied to organic particles:
The animal is a sj^stem of different organic mole-
cules, which, impelled by sensations similar to those
of obtuse and vague touch — sensations which have
been imparted to them by Him who created matter
in general — have combined, until each has found the
position most suitable to its form and to its repose.
This position, says Perrier, may be changed by
the innumerable disturbances caused by an ac-
cess of new particles which have not yet obtained
their repose.
Diderot proceeds by asking whether plants and
animals have always been what they now are;
then, continuing in a spirit similar to that of Des-
cartes, he revives the Anaxagorean doctrine of
pre-existent germs in a modified form:
Even if Revelation teaches us that species left the
hands of the Creator as they now are, the philosopher
who gives himself up to conjecture comes to the con-
clusion that life has always had its elements scattered
in the mass of inorganic matter ; that it finally came
about that these elements united; that the embryo
formed of this union has passed through an infini-
tude of organization and development; that it has
acquired, in succession, movement, sensation, ideas.
172 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
thought, reflection, conscience, emotions, signs, ges-
tures, articulation, language, laws, and finally the
sciences and arts ; that millions of years have elapsed
during each of these phases of development, and that
there are still new developments to be taken which
are as yet unkno\\Ti to us.
The hypothesis of Diderot does not imply his
advocacy of an 'internal perfecting tendency,'
for his particles do not arrange themselves in any
predetermined order. It is rather a form of the
survival of the fittest theory, applied not to entire
organisms but to the particles of which they are
composed. Blind and ceaseless trials, such as those
imagined by Empedocles, Democritus, and Lu-
cretius, are made by these particles, impelled by
their rude sensibility. As a sequel of many fail-
ures, finally a favorable combination is formed,
which persists until a recombination is rendered
necessary.
I have met another passage by Diderot, which
Morley,^ not know^ing of Empedocles' hypothe-
sis of the survival of the fittest, speaks of as an
anticipation of a famous modern theory, refer-
ring of course to Darwin's 'natural selection.'
This is especially valuable because it affords an-
other conclusive proof that the idea of the 'sur-
vival of the fittest' must actually be traced back
to Empedocles, six centuries before Christ, as
iMorley: Diderdt and the Encyclopcedists, 1878, vol. 1.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 173
narrated in the present volume. The passage on
^selection' is contained in an imaginary dialogue
upon the teleological view of Nature between
Professor Saunderson and a minister of religion :
I may at least ask of you, for example, who told
you — you and Leibnitz and Clarke and Ne\vi:on —
that in the first instances of the formation of animals,
some were not without heads and others without
feet? I may maintain . . . that all the faulty com-
binations of matter disappeared, and that those only
survived whose mechanism implied no important mis-
adaptation (contradiction), and who had the power
of supporting and perpetuating themselves.
Bonnet (1720-1793)
Charles Bonnet, a Swiss naturalist, was in no
modern sense an evolutionist, although he was
long known as such in quite another sense. He
derived the term evolution from the Latin verb
e-volvo to characterize his remarkable theory of
life, which was an adaptation to embryology of
Leibnitz' philosophy of ^continuity.' The term
became a nomen nudum when the doctrine of
'evolution' replaced that of *epigenesis,' and was
finally taken up by, and applied as appropriate
to, our modern doctrine of embryonic develop-
ment.
We may recall, in passing, the great and pro-
longed discussions during the eighteenth and the
174 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
early part of the nineteenth centuries between
the ^evolutionist' and 'epigenetic' school of em-
bryonic development, as absorbing an immense
amount of time and energy and diverting the at-
tention of naturalists from the greater problem
of the genesis of species.
When we examine Bonnet's 'evolution or ex-
pansion of the invisible into visibility' and ab-
sence of hereditary generation in the strict sense
of the term, we find it difficult to believe that
Cuvier, and many other eminent naturalists,
were among Bonnet's supporters. Erasmus Dar-
win, on the other hand, was among his opponents,
and we see in his Zoonomia} the following quaint
criticism of Bonnet's extravagant hypothesis:
Many ingenious philosophers have found so great
difficulty in conceiving the manner of the reproduc-
tion of animals, that they have supposed all the
numerous progeny to have existed in miniature in
the animal originally created. . . . This idea, be-
sides its being unsupported by any analogy we are
acquainted with, ascribes a greater tenuity to or-
ganized matter, than we can readily admit; . . .
these included embryons . . . must possess a much
greater degree of minuteness, than that which was
ascribed to the devils that tempted St. Anthony; of
whom ^0,000 were said to have been able to dance a
saraband on the point of the finest needle without
incommoding each other.
^Zoonomia, vol. 1, xxxix, iii, 1.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 175
We become more charitable in judging Bonnet
as a man of science when we learn that, begin-
ning in 1740, while associated with Reaumur in
the University of Geneva, he made a series of
admirable observations and original discoveries,
such as those upon 'parthenogenesis' in the
aphides or tree lice, the mode of reproduction in
the bryozoa, the respiration of insects, and that
it was the unfortunate failure of his eyesight in
1754 which turned him from observation to spec-
ulation. His speculations were as unsound as his
observations had been sound and valuable.
Bonnet, in 1764, published his Contemplations
de la Nature, and in 1770 his Paling enesie Phi-
losophique, ou idees sur Vet at passe et sur Vet at
futur des etres vivans. The latter work is dedi-
cated "to the friends of Truth and of Virtue,
who are mine."
Bonnet found his inspiration in the law of Con-
tinuity of Leibnitz,^ and along different lines of
reasoning he reached the same conclusion as that
of the great German philosopher, that no such
thing as generation, in the strict sense of the
term, occurs in Nature. Leibnitz' principle of
1 Bonnet's metaphysical theory is based on two principles bor-
rowed from Leibnitz — first, that there are not successive acts of
creation, but that the universe is completed by the single original
act of the divine will, and thereafter moves on by its own in-
herent force; and secondly, that there is no break in the continu-
ity of existence. The divine Being originally created a multitude
of germs in a graduated scale, each with an inherent power of
self-development. — Enc. Brit., vol. 4, p. 211.
176 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
Continuity he expands into th^ idea that all crea-
tion forms a continuous chain, echelle des etres,
from the mineral up to the top of the animal
world. In the present order of life there are no
successive acts of creation, as is generally be-
lieved by those who attempt to adapt the dis-
coveries of palaeontology to the Mosaic account.
The universe moves on by its own internal forces,
and the whole of organic life was contained pre-
formed in the germs of the first beings. Life
thus forms a scale of absolutely unbroken indi-
viduals; the varieties form links from species to
species; the first term of this chain is the atom,
the last is the most elevated of cherubim; the
chain is not broken by death, for the individual
is the bearer of all future germs. Here we find an
adumbration of the 'immortality or continuity of
the germ-plasm' in relation to the death of the
individual.
Added to this principle of Continuity is an
Aristotelian 'internal perfecting principle,' which
causes these germs to pass from the mineral to
the plant, from the plant to the animal, from the
animal to man. In these transformations Bonnet
does not seem to have been deterred by his ana-
tomical knowledge, nor to have in the least de-
gree embodied the ideas of transformism which
were at the same period being advanced by Buf-
fon; he believes that the appearance of higher
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 177
forms is simply the unfolding of pre-existing
germs, and not due to evolution by modification,
nor to the appearance of new lower forms by
abiogenesis.
Why does not Evolution produce animals
wholly unfit for their environment? This diffi-
culty is met by Bonnet's assumption that as the
whole future life was predetermined, so is the
whole order of the inorganic universe. There can,
therefore, be no possibility of an animal or plant
appearing out of its proper environment.
Bonnet belonged to the cataclysmic school, be-
lieving that the globe had been the scene of great
revolutions, and that the chaos described by
Moses was the closing chapter of one of these;
thus, the creation described in Genesis may be
only a resurrection of animals previously exist-
ing. Bonnet formulated his echelle des etres or
scale of ascending life in a manner which sug-
gests, not the branching system of Lamarck, but
the continuous links of a chain in which the
higher types are simply connected with the lower
in direct continuity. It is the old scale of Aris-
totle enlarged and defined by more modern ter-
minology.
Robinet (1735-1820)
J. B. Rene Bobinet was another of the specu-
lative group. In liis two works — De la Nature,
178 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
published in 1766, and Considerations philo-
sophiques sur la gradation naturelle des formes
de Vetre, published in 1768 — he advances a re-
markable evolutionary structure. He denies all
distinction between the organic and inorganic,
and reaches an 'echelle des etres' which embraces
all things. Influenced by Leibnitz' law of Con-
tinuity, he supposes that Nature has an aim or
constant tendency toward the perfection of each
type; since the beginning her aim has been to
produce man, and the higher apes appear as the
last efforts of Nature before she succeeded in
making man. It is unnecessary to add that Robi-
net was a daring speculator. He claimed that
one's first steps should be guided by facts, but
that beyond this, man's reason and intelligence
should not be trammelled by observation or by
experiment, but should advance free from induc-
tion.
Robinet sees in man the chef-d'oeuvre of Na-
ture. All the variations exhibited in the lower
forms of animals, from the original prototype
upward, are to be regarded as so many trials
which Nature meditates upon; not only the
orang-outang, but the horse, the dog, even miner-
als and fossils — are not these experiments of Na-
ture? But man is for the time only the last of
the series ; beings more perfect may replace him
at any time. Robinet departs so early from ob-
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 179
servation to hypothesis that he may be placed as
one of the most extreme and irrational of this
group. His work, De la Nature, is one of the
greatest curiosities of natural history literature ;
he gives a long and serious catalogue of stones
and other inorganic objects which bear acciden-
tal and remote resemblances to the various bodily
organs of man and the lower animals. These are
figured and seriously described, together with
monsters of various kinds and mermaids well
authenticated, as some of the early trials of Na-
ture in the attempt to produce man.
In one of his general principles — namely, that
of Continuity — liobinet was sound. Like Leib-
nitz and unlike Bonnet and de Maillet, he was a
uniformitarian. Nature, he says, never advances
by leaps. He applies this, however, to the origin
of life, and says there is no break between the or-
ganic and inorganic. The law of Continuity ap-
plies to germs of inanimate as well as of animate
matter — ^these germs are capable of developing
into every possible form; thus, all matter is liv-
ing and there is only one kingdom — the Animal
Kingdom. The germs develop from the simplest
to the most complex, and animals thus arising
form a continuous chain of beings, of which the
first link is a prototype of the utmost simplicity.
Germs, we see, being infinitely small and placed
far beyond the reach of experimental affirmation
180 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
or denial, are the favorite field of the speculations
of all these philosophers.
There is no idea of filiation or of Evolution in
the true sense in Robinet's system of a gradual
change of a lower form into a higher; all the
lower, intermediate, and higher forms are held
to be the direct products of the germs of Na-
ture. In sexual reproduction, for example, the
two parents do not produce these germs, but are
simply the bearers of them, and generation con-
sists merely in placing these germs under cir-
cumstances in which they can develop.
Ohen'^ (1776-1851)
Lorenzo Oken approached the problems of
life with certain preconceived notions of how
things ought to be; as half metaphysician, half
naturalist, it is evident that most of his conclu-
sions were reached purely a priori, Haeckel ex-
travagantly writes in his praise that "no doctrine
approaches so nearly to the natural Theory of
Descent, newly established by Darwin, as Oken's
much-decried 'Natur-philosopJiie' " Yet in his
cellular conception of the primordial forms of
life, Oken was anticipated in part by Buff on, by
the elder Darwin and by Lamarck; as has been
^ Oken was born at Baden and was educated at Wurtzburg; he
was later Professor in the University of Ziirich.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 181
said in his sea-slime theory, he follows so j)rimi-
tive a naturalist as Anaximander ; and in judg-
ing of his supposed anticipation of the cell doc-
trine of Schleiden and Schwann (1838) , we must
keep in mind the stress that is laid throughout all
his philosophy upon the spherical form of his
metaphysical 'All.' The skull, for example, he
believed to be one of these manifestations of the
archetypal sphere; it is not surprising that he
conceived the cell as a sphere.
There is thus room for wide differences of
opinion about Oken; his writings are such com-
pounds of apparent sense and actual nonsense,
that only by selecting and putting together cer-
tain favorably read passages, can we accord him
the rank Haeckel claims for him as a prophet,
whereas if we review as a whole his elements of
'physio-philosophy,' it appears that his prophe-
cies of one page are capable upon the following
page of interpretation as the vaguest specula-
tions and absurdities.
Oken pubhshed his outline of the Grundriss
der NaturpliilosoiMe in 1802, the same year in
which Lamarck and Treviranus independently
outlined their principles of biology and evolu-
tion. Oken's work is certainly not to be men-
tioned in the same breath with theirs, from the
modern standpoint. His work upon generation
• — Die Zeugung — appeared in 1805, containing
182 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
his UrSchleim ( ? protoplasm) and vesicular cell
theory. His Lehrhuch der Naturphilosophie ap-
peared in 1810, a year after Lamarck's Philoso-
phie Zoologique; again Oken suffers severely by
comparison. Lamarck's approaches a work of
science, Oken's is a tissue of speculation. In es-
timating Oken further, we must remember that
he is a follower of the purely speculative school
of Schelling, and that Schelling's method was to
rapidly abandon scientific induction for deduc-
tion, and to pass to the interpretation of Nature
from a subjective standpoint. Oken's writings
show that he was consistent in this method, and
Erdmann recalls that Oken's conversion of the
whole of philosophy into the philosophy of Na-
ture is a carrying out of what Schelling merely
touched upon.
It is in the famous Ur-Schleim doctrine that
Oken's admirers erroneously read notions of the
original protoplasmic and cellular basis of all
life, and in which it is said he saw the fundamen-
tal substance out of which by differentiation life
has arisen. According to Oken,^ every organic
thing has arisen out of slime, and is nothing but
slime in different forms. This primitive slime
originated in the sea, in the course of planetary
evolution. The origin of life (generatio origi-
naria) occurred upon the shores, where water,
^See Tulk's translation of the Elements of Physio'philoso'phy,
1847, Pt. Ill, pp. 185-7.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 183
air, and earth were joined. The Ur-Schleim as-
sumed the form of microscopically minute blad-
ders, and Nature has for its unit an infinity of
these. Each of these bladders has an outer dense
envelope and a fluid internal content. This 'in-
fusorium,' as he calls it, has the form of a sphere,
and is developed in the following manner: it is
first an aggregate of an almost infinite number
of organic points ; as the result of the oxydizing
process, the original fluid form is replaced by a
vesicle with a flowing interior and firm periph-
ery; in this are united the three life processes of
feeding, digestion, and respiration. The whole
organic world consists of infusoria, and both
plants and animals are simply its modifications.
Generation by heredity, according to Oken, is
the synthesis or bringing together of organic
spheres; as with Robinet, it is the sjTithesis of
germs, and with de Maupertuis and Diderot, the
synthesis of particles. As to the origin of life,
like the Greeks Oken imagined that the combina-
tion of these infinitely numerous mucous points
or infusoria, composed of carbon mixed in equal
quantities with water and air, found its most fa-
vorable conditions at the junction of sea and
land. "All hfe," he says, "is from the sea; the
whole sea is alive. Love arose out of sea-foam."
In one passage he says: "If new individuals orig-
inate, they could not originate directly from oth-
184 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
ers, but they must be redissolved into the Ur-
Schleim''
Oken also includes man and offers an hy-
pothesis of the origin of man entirely inconsist-
ent with any form of cell doctrine, when he says
that man also is the offspring of some warm and
gentle seashore, and probably rose in India,
where the first peaks appeared above the waters;
that a certain mingling of water, of blood
warmth, and of atmosphere, must have con-
joined for his production; and that this may have
happened only once and at one spot.
When we consider that this absurd passage
was allowed to stand in a work translated in
1847, long after Buffon's, E. Darwin's, and La-
marck's speculations upon the origin of man had
been published, it shows that Oken as a thinker
was not only an early Greek survival, but that he
entirely ignored the contemporary progress of
natural philosophy in the works of Goethe and
the contemporary progress of zoology in France
and England. In another passage (p. 192) he
says, entirely oblivious as well of his Ur-ScJileim
as of his previous statements: "Man has not
been created, but developed. So the Bible itself
teaches us. God did not make man out of noth-
ing; but took an elemental body then existing, an
earth-clod or carbon; moulded it into form, thus
making use of water; and breathed into it life.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 185
namely, air, whereby galvanism, or the vital
process arose."
The Great Naturalists (1707-1788)
Early in the eighteenth century, or eighty-one
years after the death of Bacon, were born, only
four days apart, Linnaeus and Buffon, the first
of the great naturalists of western Europe.
Twenty-four years later was born Erasmus Dar-
win, who shares with Lamarck the honor of set-
ting forth the first comprehensive view of the evo-
lution of the entire living world, including man.
Linnceus (1707-1778)
In the environment of the idea of Evolution,
Linnseus may be considered not as a positive but
as one of the negative factors, as founding the
'school of facts' of which Cuvier was later the
distinguished leader, and as extending the spe-
cial creation idea to the innumerable species of
plants and animals which he named. Linnaus
had been preceded as a systematic classifier by
Wotton in 1552, one of the last of the Aristote-
lian zoologists; by Gessner of the same period,
one of the first zoologists who shook off the tra-
ditions of Aristotle; by Aldrovandi in 1599; by
Sperling in 1661; by Ray (1628-1705), who
186 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
first clearly pointed out the two criteria of a spe-
cies as permanence of form and of appearance
and non-fertility with other species; and by a
number of dry, descriptive writers, who worked
upon the larger groups of animals and plants.
But the actual turning-point to modern sys-
tematic zoology and botany, following the His-
toria Animalium of Aristotle, was the great work
of Linnseus, the Systema Naturce, the first edi-
tion of which appeared in 1735. This was a work
of transcendent genius, for throughout the ani-
mal and plant world Linnaeus clearly preceived
and described the fundamental relationships and
differences between genera and species which
were ultimately destined to be grouped afresh
into the great branching tree of life as distin-
guished from the scale of life of all previous
writers. The binary system of nomenclature
therein proposed was a mere medium for the ex-
pression of his broad conceptions of the relation
of animals and plants to each other — for exam-
ple, Homo sapiens, giving the genus and species
together. 'Species' were in his mind — at least in
this early period of his thought — the units of di-
rect creation ; each species bore the impression of
the thought of the Creator, not only in its exter-
nal form but in its anatomical structure, its fac-
ulties, its functions; and the final purpose of
classification was to consider all these facts and
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 187
to arrange all animals and plants in a natural
system according to their greater or lesser like-
ness to each other.
Linnaeus took a broad view of the true basis
of classification upon general structure and kin-
ship, a view which was expanded and developed
by Cuvier. As Perrier^ observes in his admirable
critique of Linnseus, he adopted the aphorism of
Leibnitz, Natura non facit saltum; to him every
species was exactly intermediate between two
others: "We reckon as many species as issued in
pairs from the hands of the Creator." These were
his earlier views in all his writings between 1735
and 1751, in which the sentence 7iullce specice
novce often recurs, expressing his idea of the ab-
solute fixity of species from the period of their
creation as described in Genesis, the only change
being that of the extension in numbers, not of
variation in kind.
Linnseus, however, enriched by collections of
animals and plants from many parts of the
world, was too close an observer to continue to
hold this idea of the absolute fixity of species,
and in 1762 we find his interpretation of Nature
somewhat altered; this is of particular interest
because of the hypothesis which he advanced in
somewhat the following terms to explain the
origin of new species :
iLa Philosophie Zoologique avant Darwin, 1886, pp. 34, 35.
188 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
All the species of one genus constituted at first
[that is, at the Creation] one species — ah initio
unam cons tit uerint speciem; they were subsequently
multiplied by hybrid generation, that is, by inter-
crossing with other species.
He was thus inclined to admit a gi-eat increase,
by intercrossing, of species more or less recent
in origin, arising by hybridity, and losing their
original perfection of type. He elsewhere sug-
gested that a certain degree of degeneration may
be a result of the influences of changed climate
or environment.
In the last and thoroughly revised edition of
the Sy sterna Naturce, which appeared in 1766,
thirty-one years after the original edition, we no
longer find the fundamental proposition of his
earlier works, nullce specice novce. This change of
view as to mutability was, however, of a very
mild character in comparison with the very radi-
cal views as to the mutability of species under the
action of changed environment which Buff on was
expressing about the same time, for in 1755 we
find an early expression by this great French
naturalist as to mutability and even the larger
idea of evolution of species.
Buff on (1707-1788)
George Louis Leclerc Buffon may be called
the naturalist founder of the modern application
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 189
of the evolution theory to the interpretation of
actual facts of comparative anatomy, zoology,
and palaeontology . He did not, like Erasmus
Darwin and Lamarck, erect an evolution system
of life. It is true also that his conception of the
principle of Evolution changed during three pe-
riods of his life; it is difficult to gather from his
conflicting statements exactly what his opinions
were, yet we may say without exaggeration that
he laid the basis of modern Evolution in syste-
matic zoology and botany.
We claim this for Butf on, because he was the
first to point out, on a broad scale, the mutabil-
ity of species in relation to changes of environ-
ment. Moreover, he advanced beyond the Greek
evolutionists and natural philosophers of the
eighteenth century in first working out a definite
theory of the causes of the mutability of species.
His writings, which cover the widest range of
subjects, from cosmogony down to some of the
minutiag of zoology, undoubtedly exercised a
great influence in England and in Europe. He
sowed the seed of suggestion in some passages,
which, it is true, were mostly speculative, and
these seeds germinated in the minds of the later
German natural philosophers and among Buf-
fon's naturalist contemporaries, while ripening
and bearing fruit in his successor, Lamarck, and
others, both in France and England. Bufton's
190 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
suggestiveness was one of his chief merits. It
sprang from an imagination which Diderot eulo-
gized: "Heureux le philosophe systematique a
qui la Nature aura donne comme autrefois a Epi-
cure, a Lucrece, a Aristote, a Platon, une imagi-
nation forte." This imagination made and un-
made Buffon, for it touched alike his soundest
and unsoundest speculations.
In his early period Buffon shared the views as
to the fixity of species of his great contemporary
Linnaeus; in an early edition of the Histoire
Naturelle we find him using almost the exact
words of Linnaeus: "In animals, species are sep-
arated by a gap which Nature cannot bridge
over. . . . We see him, the Creator, dictating
his simple but beautiful laws and impressing
upon each species its immutable characters."
It is therefore interesting to contrast these two
leading naturalists of an heroic period in zo-
ology— the one the founder of the view of clas-
sification as a fixed system of the divine order of
things and the ne plus ultra of botany and zo-
ology, the other the founder of the directly op-
posed view of classification as an invention of
man and of the laws governing the relations
of animals and their environment as the chief
end of science. Linnaeus opened his Systema
Naturce with the statement that the true great-
ness of man consists in his observing, reasoning,
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 191
and forming conclusions, but the main tendency
of his own work was to carry his conclusions only
to the point of distinguishing between the sepa-
rate forms of life, namely,, genera and species,
not to speculate or to theorize as to the causes of
these distinctions. Buffon held that the first aim
of science was to describe exactly, and to deter-
mine particular facts, but that we must devote
ourselves to something higher; namely, to com-
bine and generalize upon the facts, and to judge
particular causes in the light of the more general
causes of Nature.
Thus, Linnaeus and Buffon were the founders
of two distinct schools. Linnaeus was upheld by
Cuvier and all the systematic writers upon genera
and species; Buffon was upheld by Lamarck,
Treviranus, Goethe, and St. Hilaire. The influ-
ence of Linneeus among his contemporaries was
vast^ — far greater than that of Buffon. The two
men were compared to the disadvantage of the
latter, and Buffon has been charged with jeal-
ousy of the great Swede ; certainly Buff on's suc-
cessor, Cuvier, was very reluctant to adopt the
Linn^ean system of naming species, and as late
as the year 1806 used the French vernacular for
fossil forms. ^ The reason why the works of Lin-
naeus were more influential is obvious, for his
genius as an observer and classifier yielded a
iSee Osborn: Proboscidea Memoir, Chap. V.
192 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
'system of nature' in complete accord with the
philosophical spirit and biological knowledge of
his day, while Buffon's evolutionary ideas were
in advance of his day and were incapable of
proof in the existing stage of knowledge.
Krause^ points out that as early as 1755 Buf-
fon found in comparative anatomy many diffi-
culties in the special creation theory:
The pig does not appear to have been formed
upon an original, special, and perfect plan, since it
is a compound of other animals ; it has evidently use-
less parts, or rather parts of which it cannot make
any use — toes all the bones of which are perfectly
formed, and which, nevertheless, are of no service to
it. Nature is far from subjecting herself to final
causes in the formation of her creatures.^
In always looking for a purpose or design in
every part, Buff on continues^; "We fail to see
that we thus deprive philosophy of its true char-
acter, and misrepresent its object, which con-
sists in the knowledge of the 'how' of things, the
way in which Nature acts." This thought was
reiterated by Goethe.
In 1761 we find that Buffon had advanced to a
belief in the frequent mutability of species under
the direct action of environment: "How many
species, being perfected or degenerated {'dena-
lErnst Krause: Erasmus Darmin, 1880, pp. 147, 148.
^Histoire Naturelle, 1755, t. V, pp. 103-4.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 193
turees') by the great changes in land and sea, by
the favors or disfavors of Nature, by food, by
the prolonged influences of climate, contrary or
favorable, are no longer what they formerly
were'' Again he says: "One is surprised at the
rapidity with which species vary, and the facility
with which they lose their primitive characteris-
tics in assuming new forms."
We are tempted to translate the term 'dena-
turees' by our modern term 'evolved,' since, as we
see above, Buffon embraced in it the two modern
ideas of development {'perfectionnement') and
degeneration {'degeneration). But this would
convey a broader conception than seems to have
been at any time in his mind ; for, by the express
use of 'denaturees,' he gives us an insight into
the limits of his conception. He could not wholly
shake off the Linngean idea that each species was
originally a special type, as impressed by the
Creator, containing some ineffaceable and per-
manent characters, and that variation consisted
in the departure from these natural and original
characters. For example, he was deeply im-
pressed with the fixity of specific type impres-
sion among the larger animals, such as the quad-
rupeds, believing them to be comparatively in-
variable.
Throughout Buffon's writings we find this
wavering between the literalism of Genesis and
194 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
the counter evidence of zoology; it is sometimes
expressed in paragraphs which closely follow one
another, wherein it is difficult to decide whether
Buffon is ironical or not. Some passages are cer-
tainly written in irony. Referring, in one in-
stance, to his idea of unity of type, he seems to
imply that, in creating animals, the Supreme Be-
ing employed only a single idea, and at the same
time varied it in every possible manner:^
It is generally admitted that man, the quadruped,
the whale, the bird, the reptile, the insect, the tree,
the plant take food, grow, and reproduce by the same
law. The form of all that breathes is nearly the same ;
in dissecting the ape we could compare its anatomy
with man's. . . . This anatomical plan is always the
same, always followed from man to ape, from ape to
quadrupeds, from quadrupeds to whales, from whales
to birds, to fishes, to reptiles. . . . When we wish to
extend it and pass from what lives to what vege-
tates, we see this plan, which had not varied from the
beginning except by delicate gradations, alter grad-
ually from reptiles to insects, from insects to worms,
from worms to zoophytes, from zoophytes to plants.
. . . The very ones whose form seems to us most per-
fect— that is, most closely approaching our own —
the apes, appear together and require attentive eyes
to distinguish one from another, because it is less to
form than to size that the distinction of an isolated
iBuffon: Histoire Naturelle. Vol. XIV (1766) of 1st edition,
pp. 27-30. See Appendix, p. 412, of Charles Darwin by Henshaw
Ward.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 195
species is attached; and man himself, though a
unique species, infinitely different from all those spe-
cies of animals, having only a mediocre height, is less
isolated and has more neighbors than the large ani-
mals. We shall see in the account of the orang-
outang that if we paid no attention to anything but
the shape, we could equally well regard this animal
as the first of the apes or the last of the men, be-
cause, with the exception of the soul, he lacks noth-
ing at all that we have, and because he differs less
from man in body than he differs from the other ani-
mals to which we have given the same name of "ape."
As to the unity of type which pervades certain
families, he says, in effect, that if we reason out
this matter, we find that the fundamental idea
of the family in classification is remote commu-
nity of origin for the man and the ape, as well
as for the horse and the ass. The ass is a degen-
erate horse ; the ape is a degenerate man. In car-
rying this back to its logical extreme, we are
forced to admit that these animals sprang from
a common source — from one animal, which, in
the succession of time, has produced, either by
perfecting itself {se perfectionnant) or by de-
g-eneration, all the races of other animals.
Then follows a passage^ that is unmistakably
ironical :
Mais non, il est certain, par la revelation, que tous
11763, t. IV, p. 383:
196 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
les animaux ont egalement participe a la grace de la
creation, que les deux premiers de chaque espece et
de toutes les especes sont sortis tout formes des mains
du Createur, et I'on doit croire qu'ils etaient tels
alors, a peu pres, qu'ils nous sont aujourd'hui repre-
sentes par leurs descendants.
It is this tour de face of opinion and this
change from earlier to later views, doubtless un-
der the influence of the Faculty of Theology at
the Sorbonne, which have led different writers to
present such widely different opinions as to Buf-
fon's share in the development of the evolution
idea. M. de Lanessan claims for Buffon the lead-
ing position as an evolutionist which is usually
accorded to Lamarck; other writers, such as Isi-
dore St. Hilaire and Haeckel, assign him a
much less important position; St. Hilaire shows
clearly that his opinions marked three periods.
Quatrefages hardly realizes the great influence
exerted by the writings of Buffon's middle pe-
riod, when his views as to the mutabihty of spe-
cies were most extreme. De Lanessan, his great-
est admirer, believes that he has anticipated not
only Lamarck in his conception of the action of
environment, but Darwin in the struggle for ex-
istence and survival of the fittest. There is no
doubt that in some passages Buffon questioned
not only the fixity, but even the reality of genera,
species, families, and other taxonomic divisions;
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 197
also that in his speculative moments he wrote of
the chain of organic life from the zoophytes to
the monkeys and man, thus borrowing from Aris-
totle and suggesting Bonnet and his famous
scale. Buffon illustrates the direct influences of
environment in the changes observed in the dif-
ferent races of men as connected with differences
of climate. He carefully traces the modifications
which are due to the domestication of various
wild animals. He speaks of the formation of new
varieties of animals by artificial selection, and
shows that similar results may be produced in
Nature by migration, thus having in mind the
'geographical segregation' law later developed by
Wagner.^
The chain of ideas of the struggle for exist-
ence, the survival of the fittest, and the elimina-
tion of the least-perfected species, the contest
between the fecundity of certain species and their
constant destruction, are all clearly expressed in
various passages. Thus we find Buffon (1788)
anticipating Malthus" (1798) in the following
passage :
1 Moriz Wagner: Die Entstehung der Arten durch rdumliche
Sonderung, Basle, 1889.
2 Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) published his famous
work, An Essay on the Principle of Population as it affects the
Future Improvement of Society, in 1798, while Buffon made the
last addition to his Histoire Naturelle in 1788. As another in-
stance of continuity it is interesting to recall the obligation Dar-
win expresses to Malthus.
198 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
Le cours ordinaire de la nature vivante, est en
general tou jours constant, tou jours le meme; son
mouvement, tou jours regulier, roule sur deux points
inebranlables : Tun, la fecondite sans bornes donnee
a toutes les especes ; I'autre, les obstacles sans nombre
qui reduisent cette fecondite a une mesure determinee
et ne laissent en tout temps qu'a peu pres la meme
quantite d'individus de chaque espece.
Again, his idea of the extinction of the least-
perfected species is shown in the following pas-
sage, also quoted by de Lanessan:
Les especes les moins parfaites, les plus delicates,
les plus pesantes, les moins agissantes, les moins
armees, etc., ont deja disparu ou disparaitront.
Buffon not only observed the negative influ-
ences of environment in the reduction of num-
bers in certain species and in the disappearance
of imperfect types, but also its positive action in
the production of new characters. Here we come
upon the third and main feature of what may be
called Buffon's theory of the factors of Evolu-
tion, namely, the direct action of environment in
the modification of the structure of animals and
plants and the conservation of these modifications
through heredity. He especially applied this fac-
tor to explain the origin of new species in the
New World of America.
It is amusing to the modern zoologist of Amer-
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 199
ica, familiar with the great antiquity and autoch-
thonous origin of many kinds of animals and
plants, to note that Buffon, in common with all
his contemporaries, always conceived of the New
World as not only new in point of discovery, but
as new in its zoological evolution. He illustrated
his ideas as to the direct action of environment
in saying that Old World types, finding their
way into the New World, w^ould there undergo
modifications sufficient to cause us to regard
them as new species ; and in this connection Buf-
fon, in opposition to the general cataclysmal
teaching in the geology of his period, expresses
the uniformitarian idea that Nature is in a grad-
ual but continuous state of transition, and that
man must consider and observe changes which
are going on in his own period in order to under-
stand what has gone on in the past and what will
happen in the future.
It is with such uniformitarian passages as
these that Buffon inspired later writers to con-
sider the great problem of Evolution. He may
be said to have asked all the questions and to
have stated all the problems which were to be an-
swered or to be solved in the course of the suc-
ceeding century. It is in this suggestiveness that
we find his chief merits. As St. Hilaire says,
his glory lies in what he prepared for his succes-
sors, in his creation of a philosophy of compara-
200 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
tive zoology, his views of community of origin,
laws of geographical distribution, extinction of
old species, and successive apparition of new
species.
In order to be fair to Buffon's followers, we
must, however, test the breadth of his concep-
tion by his application of it to the actual succes-
sion of forms of life; and here we find in numer-
ous passages, as pointed out by Quatrefages,
that his conception was very limited and that he
lacked the courage of his convictions.
First, after having maintained in his first pe-
riod the extreme special creation view, and in
his second period, especially between 1761 and
1766, the extreme transmutation view, he re-
turned finally to the moderate view, that species
were neither fixed nor mutable, but that specific
types could assume a great variety of forms.
Second, in his theory of the causes of Evolu-
tion, considering temperature, climate, food, and
capillarity as the three causes of change, altera-
tion, and degeneration of animals, he did not
employ the terms heredity or transmission of ac-
quired characters, although it is evident that
these factors were implied. In other words, Qua-
trefages points out, Buffon did not follow his
theory into its details.
Third, he also failed to reach the phyletic or
branching idea of Evolution. In this connection
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 201
it may be recalled that the science of palaeontol-
ogy was then unborn and that the succession of
species in the rocks was undreamed of. He ex-
pressly says that the 'filiation' and genealogy of
species furnish a problem beyond our reach:
Nous ne pourrions nous prononcer plus affirma-
tivement si les limites qui separent les especes, ou la
chairie qui les unit, nous etaient mieux connues ; mais
qui peut avoir suivi la grande filiation de toutes les
genealogies dans la nature? II faut etre ne avec elle
et avoir, pour ainsi dire, des observations contempo-
raines.
Fourth, Buffon's ideas regarding the physical
basis of heredity are very similar to those of
Democritus, and certainly contain the basis of
the conception of the pangenesis theory of Dar-
win, for he supposes that the elements of the
germ-cells were gathered from all parts of the
body. He does not expressly speak of the trans-
mission of acquired characters as a logical part
of his theory of heredity, but such transmission
was undoubtedly in his mind, although not
clearly formulated as by Lamarck.
Buff on thus left untouched many problems for
his successors, even prior to the period of Charles
Darwin, namely, Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck,
and Goethe.
202 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802)
Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of the great
naturahst, is one of the most interesting figures
in our present history. In his volumes of verse
we find that he is one of the poets of the evolution
idea, following Empedocles and Lucretius and
followed by the greater poet Goethe. His early
writings were the Botanic Garden and Loves of
the Plants, two volumes of verse completed and
published about 1790, and his Zoonomia, a large
medico-philosophical work published in 1794. In
the Temple of Nature, of the year 1802 memo-
rable for coincidences, published after his death,
he gives in poetical form the ideas which had ma-
tured during the last ten years of his life.
We owe to Ernst Krause a careful study of
the works of Eramus Darwin, originally pub-
lished in Kosmos, and subsequently translated
into English with a biography of Erasmus Dar-
win written by Charles Darwin. Krause, how-
ever, in his admirable biography, fails to give
Darwin's predecessors sufficient credit; his ideas,
it is true, were partly gathered from his own
notes as a physician and as a lifelong observer of
Nature, but they indicate also a very careful
reading of Leibnitz, as in his allusion to the
change of genera in the Ammonites ; to Buff on,
as in ideas connected with the struggle for ex-
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 203
istence and variations under artificial selection;
to Linnaeus, Blumenthal, and others; as to the
origin of life, he drew poetically from the Greeks,
especially from Aristotle, limiting spontaneous
generation, however, to the lowest organisms.
The Greeks also gave him the fundamental
idea of Evolution, for he says, "This idea of
the gradual formation and improvement of the
Animal world seems not to have been unknown
to the ancient philosophers." His general phi-
losophy of Nature, as under the operation of
natural laws rather than of the supernatural, he
himself in the Zoonornia attributes to David
Hume. His view of the origin of adaptations or
of design in Nature was thoroughly naturalistic ;
he believed that adaptations had not been spe-
cially created, but that they had been naturally
and gradually acquired by powers of develop-
ment planted within the original organisms by
the Creator.
Passages from TJie Temple of Nature indicate
that in his latest writings Darwin was a firm
evolutionist even as to the descent of man, and
that he had advanced considerably beyond the
tentative views expressed many years before in
the Zoonomia and Botanic Garden. Krause has
selected many of these passages from the Temple
of Nature, Erasmus Darwin's epic of Evolu-
tion, opening with his presentation of the Greek
204 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
doctrine of the spontaneous origin of life, which
we have seen revived during the eighteenth cen-
tury in so many extravagant forms, but which
Darwin restricts to the lowest organisms:
Hence without parents, by spontaneous birth,
Rise the first specks of animated earth.
Organic life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'd in ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass ;
These, as successive generations bloom.
New powers acquire and larger limbs assume ;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring.
And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.
Then, in the transition from sea to dry land,
came the amphibious, and finally the terrestrial,
forms of life. Gradually new powers are ac-
quired. In these metamorphoses, Darwin does not
revive the fancies of such writers as de Maillet,
but illustrates his views by changes such as those
seen in the development from the tadpole to the
frog.
Passing on, he speaks of cross-fertilization,
and finally reaches the central problem of the
origin of man, in several lines of which he antici-
pates the work of his grandson, Charles Darwin.
We here find a very interesting section in this
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 207
\nomia} In this chapter he combats Bonnet's
apctrine of emboitcmcnt or Evolution, and de-
ir)nds the idea of individual development by suc-
pgssive additions of parts to the embryo, but in
im original formation of the embryo he rejects
tha pangenesis theory of BufFon, that is, of the
of ri^S^^i^^ o^ 1^^^ parts from the two parents.
jQus^'^se organic particles he [Buffon] supposes
fjn^e ist in the spermatic fluids of both sexes, and
in sii^^^y ^^^ derived thither from every part of
inff ^ody, and must therefore resemble, as he sup-
(jgses, the parts from whence they are derived."
le substitutes for this a theory of his own, of the
addition of parts, which takes little account of
che law^s of heredity.
The individual life begins or develops, as all
life originally began, from a single filament.^
"Shall we conjecture," he says, "that one and the
same kind of living filament is and has been the
cause of all organic life? ... I suppose this liv-
ing filament, of whatever form it may be, whether
sphere, cube, or cylinder, to be endued with
the capability of being excited into action by cer-
tain kinds of stimulus." This irritability and ex-
citability is the first step in Darwin's concep-
tion of Evolution. It is that whereby animals
and plants react to their environment, causing
^ Zoonomia, vol. 1, xxxix.
"^Compare the cell theory of Schlelden and Schwann.
208 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
changes in their own structure, these changes be-
ing transmitted to their offspring.
In this chapter upon Generation {i, e., Hered-
ity), he throws out a wealth of suggestion and
inquiry which indicates a thorough appreciation
of the problems which were yet to be solved, as
well as of the broader aspects of Evolution. He
touches upon embryology, comparative anatomy,
the coloring of animals, artificial selection, and
treats environment almost in its broadest sense.
We may briefly follow the outline of his argu-
ment for Evolution in the Zoonomia of the year
1794. He says, in effect, that when we revolve in
our minds the metamorphoses of animals, as
from the tadpole to the frog; secondly, the
changes produced by artificial cultivation, as in
the breeds of horses, dogs, and sheep ; thirdly, the
changes produced by conditions of climate and
of season, as in the sheep of warm climates being
covered with hair instead of wool, and the hares
and partridges of northern climates becoming
white in winter: when, further, we observe the
changes of structure produced by habit, as seen
especially in men of different occupations ; or the
changes produced by artificial mutilation and
prenatal influences, as in the crossing of species
and production of monsters ; fourth, when we ob-
serve the essential unity of plan in all warm-
blooded animals — we are led to conclude that
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 209
they have been ahke produced from a similar hv-
ing filament.
Having thus discussed some of the most ob-
vious arguments for mutability, he proceeds to
speculate upon the causes of these changes:
All animals undergo perpetual transformations;
which are in part produced by their own exertions
. . . and many of these acquired forms or propen-
sities are transmitted to their posterity. [Italics my
own.]
This, so far as I know, is the first clear and
definite statement of the theory of the transmis-
sion of acquired characters considered as one of
the causes of Evolution. We will now continue to
examine Darwin's argument, and later will illus-
trate his application of his theory of causation.
He proceeds to discuss the wants of animals,
arranging them first under the head of sexual
characters, as, for example, horns and spurs de-
veloped for purposes of combat and of procuring
the females. Thus, the horns of the stag have not
been developed to protect him from the boar, but
from other stags ; he here misses the idea of the
sexual selection of the horns developed as orna-
ments to the male. Other organs, he says, are de-
veloped in the search for food; for example,
cattle have acquired rough tongues to pull oif
210 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
the blades of grass. Of these and similar acquisi-
tions he says:
All which seem to have been gradually produced
during many generations hy the perpetual endeavour
of the creatures to supply the want of food, and to
have been delivered to their posterity with constant
improvement of them for the purposes required,
[Italics my own.]
The idea of protective coloring he thus defi-
nitely unfolds: "There are organs developed for
protective purposes, diversifying both the form
and colour of the body for concealment and for
combat."
He closes his long argument by pointing out
the close descending gradations in Nature from
the higher to the lower forms, and the substan-
tial similarity between the animal and vegetable
kingdoms in their modes of generation or repro-
duction, and concludes as follows:
From thus . . . considering in how minute a por-
tion of time many of the changes of animals above
described have been produced; would it be too bold
to imagine, that in the great length of time, since the
earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before
the commencement of the history of mankind, . . .
that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one
living filament, which the great First Cause en-
dued with animality, with the power of acquiring
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 211
new parts, attended with new propensities, directed
by irritations, sensations, volitions, and associations ;
and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to im-
prove by its own inherent activity, and of delivering
down those improvements by generation to its pos-
terity, world without end !
If we analyze this statement, which strikingly
reminds us of the closing paragraph in his grand-
son's Origin of Species, we see that it involves:
First, a clear idea of the evolution of all forms
of life from a single filament or minute organic
mass — as we should express it today, a minute
mass of protoplasm.
Second, that this evolution has occupied mil-
lions of years and has been controlled not by
supernatural causes but by natural causes.
Third, the directing or adaptive power to
which he alludes has sprung from efforts to meet
new needs in the course of changing environment.
Fourth, it is clear from the context that by the
term 'inherent activity,' Darwin does not allude
to an internal perfecting principle such as we
find originated with Aristotle, but that the power
of improvement rests with the animal's own ef-
forts, the effects of these efforts upon the body
being transmitted by heredity.
Fifth, he does not build a branching or phy-
letic system of Evolution, as did Lamarck, but
simply leaves this part of the system out, and
212 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
passes on to illustrations of the causes and prin-
ciples of trans formism.
Darwin seems to realize that he will be charged
with irreverence in thus substituting the idea of
Evolution for that of Special Creation; he meets
this by establishing his evolution hypothesis upon
a basis of natural causation or secondary causes.
As pointed out above, his fundamental theory
in the origin of new adaptations is what has since
been called 'archsesthetism' by Cope.^ Accord-
ing to this, growth is stimulated by irritability
and sensibility, or — in Darwin's language^ — in
the passage upward from the original filament :
The most essential parts of the system . . . are
first formed by the irritations above mentioned [hun-
ger, thirst, etc.], and by the pleasurable sensations
attending those irritations, and by the exertions in
consequence of painful sensations, similar to those of
hunger and suffocation. ... In confirmation of
these ideas it may be observed, that all the parts of
the body endeavour to grow, or to make additional
parts to themselves throughout our lives.
I have carefully searched for these passages,
and find a most striking confirmation of Charles
Darwin's well-known sentence: "It is curious
how largely my grandfather, Doctor Erasmus
1 E. D. Cope: Origin of the Fittest, 1887, pp. 405-21.
^ Zoonomia, vol. 1, xxxix.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 213
Darwin, anticipated the views and erroneous
grounds of opinion of Lamarck in his Zoono-
mia.'' Among the passages abov^e quoted, and in
those following, we find the whole framework
and even in part the very language of Lamarck's
Four Laws.
Erasmus Darwin again illustrates his theory
of progressive modification as seen in the evolu-
tion of Man:^
As labour strengthens the muscles employed, and
increases their bulk, it would seem that a few genera-
tions of labour or of indolence may in this respect
change the form and temperament of the body. . . .
Add to these the various changes produced in the
forms of mankind, by their early modes of exertion
. . . which became hereditary.
In the succeeding pages he also applies the law
of transmission of acquired adaptations to the
lower animals ; for example, the snout of the pig,
the trunk of the elephant, the rough tongues of
cattle, and beaks of birds, "seem to have been
gradually produced during many generations by
the perpetual endeavour of the creatures to sup-
ply the want of food, and to have been delivered
to their posterity with constant improvement of
them for the purposes required."
As regards the origin of plants, he at one point
^Zoonomia, vol. 1, xxxi, xxxix.
214 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
mentions the suggestion of Linngeus: "From
hence [single hving filament], as Linnseus has
conjectured in respect to the vegetable world, it is
not impossible, but the great variety of species of
animals, which now tenant the earth, may have
had their origin from the mixture of a few natural
orders." Elsewhere he speaks of plants as having
arisen in the contest for light and air. He carries
the idea of sensibility and irritability into plant
life, and his theory of plant evolution is similar to
that of animal evolution.
Erasmus Darwin was, however, fully con-
scious of the limitations of his theory of the origin
of adaptations, for in speaking of protective col-
oring he says:^ "The final cause of these colours
is easily understood, as they serve some purposes
of the animal, but the efficient cause would seem
almost beyond conjecture." The same problem of
adaptation we have seen propounded by Kant at
about the same period: "How can purposeful
forms of organization arise without a purposeful
working cause? How can a work full of design
build itself up without a design and without a
builder?" Of course we do not know whether
Darwin had this suggested to him by Kant, but
it is exceedingly interesting to see him so clearly
state the two-thousand-year-old problem of 'fit-
ness' which his grandson later largely solved.
^Zoonomia, vol. 1, xxxix.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 215
While this chapter on Generation is a com-
paratively small part of the Zoonornia, we learn
that the volume as a whole attracted much atten-
tion at the time. The Scottish philosopher James
McCosh read the work while a student in Edin-
burgh. There it made a considerable sensation,
and was critically examined and opposed by
Thomas Brown, M.D., in a critique^ devoted
chiefly to the principles of psychologj^ and phys-
iology of heredity found in Darwin's volume,
with less attention to evolutionary ideas. Pas-
sages like the following show that Erasmus Dar-
win exposed himself to a line of criticism similar
to that which Charles Darwin applied to the theo-
ries of Lamarck:
As the earth, to a considerable depth, abounds
with the recrements of organic life, Dr. Darwin
adopts the opinion, that it has been generated, rather
than created; the original quantity of matter hav-
ing been continually increased, by the processes of
animalization, and vegetation. This production of
the causes of effects he considers, as affording a more
magnificent idea of the infinite power of the Crea-
tor, than if he had simply caused the effects them-
selves; and, if the inconceivable be the source of the
magnificent, the opinion is just. It is contrary, how-
ever, to all the observations, which prove the proc-
esses of animal, and vegetable growth, to be the result
^Thomas Brown: Observations on the Zoonomia of Erasmus
Darwin, M.D., Edinburgh, 1798, pp. 432-3, 464-7.
216 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
of new combinations of matter, previously existing;
and it is also in direct opposition to the opinions,
which Dr. Darwin has himself advanced. . . .
Dr. Darwin seems to consider the animals of
former times, as possessing powers, much superior to
those of their posterity. They reasoned on their
wants : they wished : and it was done. The boar, which
originally differed little from the other beasts of the
forest, first obtained tusks, because he conceived
them to be useful weapons, and then, by another
process of reasoning, a thick shield-like shoulder, to
defend himself from the tusks of his fellows. The
stag, in like manner, formed to himself horns, at
once sharp, and branched, for the different purposes
of offence, and defence. Some animals obtained wings,
others fins, and others swiftness of foot; while the
vegetables exerted themselves, in inventing various
modes of concealing, and defending their feeds, and
honey. These are a few of many instances, adduced
by Dr. Darwin, which are all objectionable, on his
own principles ; as they require us to believe the va-
rious propensities, to have been the cause, rather
than the effect, of the difference of configuration. . . .
If we admit the supposed capacity of producing
organs, by the mere feeling of a want, man must
have been greatly degenerated, or been originally in-
ferior, in power. He may \Nash for wings, as the other
bipeds are supposed to have done with success ; but a
century of wishes will not render him abler to take
flight. It is not, however, to man that the observa-
tion must be confined. No improvements of form have
been observed, in the other animals, since the first
dawnings of zoology ; and we must, therefore, believe
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 217
them, to have lost the power of production, rather
than to have attained all the objects of their desire.
This critique, together with an article upon
''Cause and Effect," won for Doctor Brown the
professorship of moral philosophy in the Univer-
sity of Edinburgh. We see, therefore, in Great
Britain, as in France, that the adherents of the
evolution idea found the spirit of the universities
strongly hostile. As we pass from man to man in
these outlines of the evolution idea, selecting cer-
tain paragraphs and ignoring all the contempo-
rary literature, we must not lose sight of the fact
that the major weight of scientific as well as the-
ologic opinion was, throughout all this period,
upon the side of Special Creation. For one argu-
ment like Erasmus Darwin's upon the side of
gradual development, there were hundreds upon
the side of the sudden creation of species.
Nevertheless we may attribute to Erasmus
Darwin, under the influence of David Hume, a
full conception of the idea of Evolution as op-
posed to Special Creation in the divine order of
the universe :^
The late Mr. David Hume . . . concludes that
the world itself might have been generated, rather
than created; that is, it might have been gradually
produced from very small beginnings, increasing by
^Zoonomia, xxxix, IV, 8.
218 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
the activity of its inherent principles, rather than by
a sudden evolution of the whole by the Almighty
fiat. — What a magnificent idea of the infinite power
of the Great Architect! The Cause of Causes!
Parent of Parents! Ens Entium!
For if we may compare infinities, it would seem to
require a greater infinity- of power to cause the causes
of effects, than to cause the effects themselves.
That this theistic view of creation by Evolu-
tion won the attention and support of natural
philosophers is sho^^^i by the following statement
attributed to the Reverend James iMcCloud in
the year 1818:'
Progressive evolution is the universal plan. Every-
thing which we meet in the world around us, matter
and mind, every individual and all congregated
masses, begin their course as germs and unfold in
slow progression. . . . The faculties of all intelli-
gent creation, all that ^^ou call mind, all that you
call heart, are framed for an interminable series of
evolutions. ... It is not mainly the mould of this
mighty frame of tilings which establishes it, it is the
fact that creation is eternall}^ unfolding new re-
sources and presenting itself under successive and
amazing combinations of which no creature in the
universe had imagined it capable.
^See Creation by Evolution, edited bv Frances Mason, 1928,
p. 23.
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE,
GOETHE AND NAUDIN
Ainsi, la nature, toujours agissante, toujours impassible,
renouvelant et variant toute espece de corps, n'en pre-
servant aucun de la destruction, nous offre une scene im-
posante et sans terme, et nous montre en elle une puissance
particuliere qui n'agit que par necessite. — Lamarck.
Wir konnen bei Betrachtung des Weltgebaudes in seiner
weitesten Ausdehnung, in seiner letzten Teilbarkeit uns der
Vorstellung nicht erwehren, dass dem Ganzen eine Idee
zum Grunde liege, wornach Gott in der Natur, die Natur
in Gott von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit schaffen und wirken
moge. Anschauung, Betrachtung, Nachdenken fiihren uns
naher an jene Geheimnisse. Wir erdreisten uns und wagen
auch Ideen; wir bescheiden uns und bilden Begriffe, die
Analog jenen Uranfangen sein mochten. — Goethe.
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE,
GOETHE AND NAUDIN
A Question of Priority — Lamarck — Geoffroy St. Hilaire
— Discussion between Cuvier and St. Hilaire — Goethe —
Cuvier — Treviranus — Bory de St. Vincent — Isidore St.
Hilaire — Naudin.
THE movement toward placing Evolution
upon a truly observational or inductive basis,
begun by Buffon, continued throughout the first
half of the nineteenth century. There were scat-
tered observation and speculation upon the filia-
tion and transmutation of species. There was a
rapid extension of the sciences of geology, pa-
Iseontology, zoology, botany, and comparative
anatomy. Nature in each of these great branches
manifested the evolution principle, but in none
was the evidence so strong and cumulative as to
overcome arguments and ecclesiastical influence
on the conservative side. Consequently the move-
ment steadily declined toward the middle of the
nineteenth century, and notions of the fixity of
species had a stronger foothold than ever in the
teachings of the great masters of zoology like
Cuvier and Agassiz.
221
222 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
A Question of Priority
First we must consider an important step in
the history of the evolution theory; that is, the
relation of Erasmus Darwin to Lamarck. We
shall see, in treating Lamarck, that the parallel-
ism between the line of reasoning of these two
men is very striking. They use not only the same
illustrations but almost the same language, and
by putting together various passages from Dar-
win's writings we can reconstruct, almost verba-
tim, the four principles of Lamarck. Darwin's
Zoonomia was published in 1794, while Lamarck^
in the same year adopted Buffon's maturer and
more conservative views, as shown in the follow-
ing statements :
All the individuals of this nature are derived from
similar individuals, which altogether constitute the
entire species. ... If there exist many varieties
produced by the action of environment [circon-
stancesl, these varieties do not at all change the spe-
cies [ces varietes ne denaturent point les especes] .
It was not until 1801, seven years after the pub-
lication of the Zoonomia, that Lamarck pub-
lished his theory of the mutability of species. This
theory had two main features, namely, that ani-
'^Recherches sur les Causes des principaux Faits physiques, 1794,
4th pt., 686, p. 214.
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 223
mals were evolved, not, as Euffon supposed, by
the direct external action of environment, but
by environment acting upon internal structure
through the nervous system, and by the trans-
mission of the modifications thus produced. As
regards the origin of plants, Lamarck believed
with Buff on that they were evolved by the direct
action of environment. Lamarck nowhere makes
any allusion to the Zoonomia, and de Lanessan
has pointed out that he also pays very scant
tribute to Buffon, though there is the strongest
internal evidence that Lamarck was largely influ-
enced by the writings of Buffon's second period.
How shall we explain this coincidence or ap-
parent plagiarism? We must adopt one of two
alternatives. One is, as later in the famous and
quite as closely parallel Wallace-Darwin case,
that both naturalisjts arrived independently at the
same conclusions, influenced alike by the writ-
ings of Linnseus and the earlier writings of Buf-
fon, also by their own observations upon Nature ;
or, we must suppose that Lamarck borrowed
freely from Darwin without giving him credit.
We should hesitate before adopting the latter
alternative, when we consider that the inter-
change of thought between the two countries was
not so constant as at present, also that Erasmus
Darwin's views were buried rather obscurely in
a great quarto mainly devoted to medicine and
224 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
in two long didactic poems. Again, we must
note that Geoffroy St. Hilaire, while crediting
Goethe, Buff on, and others with having partly
anticipated Lamarck, and giving a very complete
bibliographical description of the subject, no-
where mentions Erasmus Darwin. It does not
seem probable that Darwin's work could have
been used by Lamarck and have remained wholly
unknown to St. Hilaire. The dates and the points
of internal evidence, however, in a measure seem
to justify the suggestion of Charles Darwin and
the very strong suspicion of Doctor Krause that
Lamarck was familiar with the Zoonomia and
made use of it in the development of his theory.
M. Charles Martins, the chief biographer of
Lamarck, calls attention to the fact that the great
French astronomer Laplace (1749-1827) sup-
ported Lamarck in the doctrine of the transmis-
sion of acquired adaptations, even as applied to
the origin of the mental faculties of man; and
in the passages quoted by Martins to sustain this
point, we have evidence that both Laplace and
Lamarck anticipated Herbert Spencer. We have
seen that the general doctrine of transmission of
acquired characters was a very ancient one, orig-
inating among the Greek natural philosophers.
It had been expressed in France by others — by
de Maillet, for example. The most important
testimony in favor of Lamarck's originality is
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 225
his own; it is in a very striking passage in the
introduction of the second edition (1835) of his
Aniviaux sans Vertehrcs (pp. 2, 3), Lamarck's
latest work. He says:
I set forth my general theory. It deserves close at-
tention ; and as far as possible, men should determine
how far I am well founded in all that I have written.
I have, in fact, advanced a general theory upon the
origin of life and upon its modes of manifestation,
upon tlie origin of the faculties, upon the variations
and phenomena of organization of different animals,
— a theory consistent in its principles and applicable
to all cases. It is the first, so it seems to me, which
has been presented, the only theory, therefore, which
exists^ because I do not know any work which offers
another theory based upon such a large number of
principles and considerations. This theory of mine
recognizes in Nature the power to produce some re-
sult, in fact, all the results we see. Is it well estab-
lished? Certainly, it seems to me so; and all my ob-
servations tend to confirm it. Otherwise I would not
publish it. It rests with those who do not accept it to
substitute another, with equally wide application, or
with a still wider application to the facts. But this
I hardly believe to be possible.
From this statement it seems that we have sat-
isfactory evidence that Erasmus Darwin and
Lamarck independently evolved their views, and
this is further confirmed by a careful reading of
Lamarck's first exposition of his theory in his
226 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
work of 1802. This has very httle similarity with
Darwin's form of statement or language, al-
though it embodies essentially the same theory.
To Huxley's rather pointed question, "It would
be interesting to know what was the occasion of
Lamarck's change of view between 1779 and
1802," we may answer that this change was prob-
ably due to the change of his studies from
botany to zoology, for it was upon the influence
of habit as observed in animal life, especially in
degeneration and development, that his theory
was developed.
Lamarck' (1744-1829)
Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, other-
wise known as the Chevalier de Lamarck, was,
according to his biographer, a man of great
physical and moral courage; he distinguished
himself by an act of singular bravery in the
army. Receiving an injury, he re-entered life as
a doctor. He was first attracted to botany by the
rich flora observed during his military service
near Monaco. Coming to Paris, he gained Buf-
fon's attention, and became an intimate friend of
his household. His Flore frangaise, written in six
months, was printed under Buffon's direction
and passed through many editions; this was a
systematic work, an adaptation of the system of
1 Compare A. S. Packard: Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution.
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 227
Linmuus to the flora of France. He seems to have
been gifted with the power of exceptionally rapid
observation, with great facility in writing, and
with unusual powers of definition and descrip-
tion.
At the age of forty-nine Lamarck was trans-
ferred, under the Directory, to a zoological chair
in the Jardins des Plantes, where he was espe-
cially placed in charge of the invertebrates ; at the
same time Geoffroy St. Hilaire was appointed to
the care of the vertebrates. Lamarck took up the
study of zoology with such zeal and success that
he almost immediately introduced striking re-
forms in classification. The early fruits of his
zoological studies were not only a series of very
valuable additions to the classification of animals,
such as the divisions, Vertebrata and Inverte-
brata, and the groups, Crustacea, Arachnida, and
Annelida, but the rapid development of a true
conception of the mutability of species, and of
the great law of the origin of species by descent.
His devotion to the study of the small forms
of life, probably with inferior facilities for work,
gradually deprived him of the use of his eyes,
and in 1819 he became completely blind. The
last two volumes of the first edition of his His-
toire Naturellc des Animaux sans Vcrtchrcs,
which was begun in 1815 and completed in 1822,
were carried on by dictation to his daughter, who
228 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
showed him the greatest affection; after Lamarck
was confined to his room, it is said she never left
the house. Lamarck was thus saddened in his old
age by extreme poverty and by the harsh recep-
tion of his transmutation theories, in the truth of
which he felt the most absolute conviction.
Lamarck, as the founder of the complete mod-
ern theory of descent, is the most prominent fig-
ure between Aristotle and Darwin. One cannot
compare his PhilosopJiie Zoologique with all
previous and contemporary contributions to the
evolution theory, or learn the extraordinary dif-
ficulties under which he labored and that this
work was put forth only a few years after he had
turned from botany to zoology, without gaining
the greatest admiration for his genius. No one
has been more misunderstood, or judged with
more partiality by over or under praise. The
stigma placed upon his writings by Cuvier, who
greeted every fresh edition of his works as a
'nouvelle folie,' and the disdainful allusions to
his theory by Charles Darwin (the only writer
of whom Darwin ever spoke in this tone) long
placed him in the light of a purely extravagant,
speculative thinker. His PhilosopJiie Zoologique
of 1809 attracted but little attention until Comte
appreciated its value in his own PhilosopJiie
Positive. However, as a fresh instance of the cer-
tainty with which men of genius finally obtain
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 229
recognition, it is gratifying to note the admira-
tion which has been accorded to him in Germany
by Haeckel and others, by his countrymen, and
by a large school of American, English and Ital-
ian writers of the present day; to note, further,
that his theory of causes was finally taken up
and defended by Charles Darwin himself, and
that it forms the very heart of the biological sys-
tem of Herbert Spencer.
None the less, it is now a question under dis-
cussion whether Lamarck's factor of the trans-
mission of acquired adaptations is a factor in
Evolution at all! If it prove to be no factor, La-
marck will sink gradually into obscurity as one
great figure in the history of opinion. If it prove
to be even an indirect factor, as in the modern
hypothesis of 'organic selection,' he will rise into
a more eminent position than he now holds — into
a rank not far below Darwin's.
The development of Lamarck's views was, as
we have seen above, apparently coincident with
his turning from botany to zoology. His route of
observation lay along comparative zoology and
botany, as in after years Goethe's lay along the
comparative anatomy and morphology of plants
and animals. It seems that the most speculative of
all his writings were his earlier physical treatises.
One of these early works was his Rccherches
sur les Causes des principaux Faits plnjsiques.
230 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
written in 1776 and presented to the Academy
in 1780, but not published until 1794 (the date
of the Zoonomia) , Here Lamarck, as we have
seen, affirms his belief in the immutability of
species and strong disbelief in the theory of the
spontaneous origin of life, saying that all the
physical forces we know, combined, cannot form
a single organic being capable of reproduction.
All individuals in organic life descend from other
individuals altogether similar, which taken to-
gether constitute the entire species. It is certain
from this that in 1776 Lamarck held views simi-
lar to those of his master, Buffon, in his third pe-
riod. It is possible that prior to 1794 his own
opinions had become modified, but that he had
left his original manuscript unchanged for pub-
lication.
In his Ht/drogeologie, published in 1802, he
developed his uniformitarian ideas in geology
and proposed the term 'biology' for the sciences
of life. It is in the preface of this work that he
speaks of projecting a 'Physique terrestre' to in-
clude three parts : Meteorologie, Hydrogeologie,
and Biologie. The first and last sections were
never completed.
In the year 1802 also appeared his RechercJies
sur V Organisation des Corps vivans, in which he
first sketches his evolution theory. This work was
particularly upon the origin of the living body.
FROM LAIVIARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 231
upon the causes of its development, and upon its
progressive composition. It is important to note
that in this work he projects a scale of life some-
what similar to that of Bonnet and of Aristotle.
This shows that at that time the history of life
presented itself to his mind as a vertical chain of
masses of organisms, not of species ; so far as ap-
pears, he had not then developed the branching
idea which he expressed in the word embranchC'
meiit. This chain he puts forth to show the
^de gradation^ or downward stages or gradations
from the highest to the lowest forms, indicating
the march of Nature in its progressive develop-
ments. Here and elsewhere Lamarck acknowl-
edges his indebtedness to the Greeks, especially
to Aristotle. Two main principles are brought out
in this work anticipating his later theory of the
causes of Evolution: first, it is not organs which
have given rise to habits, but habits, modes of
life, and environment which have given rise to
organs ; this is illustrated by the blindness of the
mole, by the presence of teeth in mammals, and
the absence of teeth in birds. His second principle
is, that life is an order and condition of things in
the parts of all bodies which possess it, which ren-
ders possible all the organic movements within.
1 We do not find the word 'evolution' in Lamarck ; he used the
word degradation in the sense of steps or stages {changement in-
sensible et confinu) and the word 'gradation' (Lat. gradus) in the
sense of evolution. See pp. 19, 20.
FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
There is no evidence in this work of the year
1802 that Lamarck had seen Darwin's Zoonomia,
The parallelism with the Zoonomia comes out
much more prominently in Lamarck's most im-
portant speculative work, Philosophie Zoolo-
gique, published in 1809, in which his earlier
views are developed and expanded. This is char-
acterized by a clear and beautiful style and by a
logical development of the argument, in which
Lamarck's whole scheme of Evolution is grad-
ually unfolded. His theory was never developed
beyond this point, although he restated it in a
more condensed form in the introduction to his
Histoire Naturelle des Animaua: sans Vertehres
between 1815 and 1822.
The Philosophie Zoologique shows that three
truths had now come to him from his labors in
botany and zoology, and presumably from his
wider readings of earlier writings of Buffon, of
Linnseus, and of the Greeks, to whom he makes
allusion. These are, first, the certainty that spe-
cies vary under changing external influences;
second, that there is a fundamental unity in the
animal kingdom; third, that there is a progres-
sive and perfecting development. Among the di-
rect influences of environment he cites the cases
of the supposed influence of water upon plants
and upon the lower animals ; the influence of air
in forming the entire respiratory system of birds ;
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HIL.\IRE 233
the influence of light upon plants, directly upon
the coloring of animals, and upon the develop-
ment and degeneration of eyes ; and the influences
of heat. The main influences come under the law
of use and disuse, for he believes that Nature
effects her changes not directly but through the
reaction of animals to their environment. He thus
differs widely from Buff on: *'Lack of employ-
ment of an organ becoming constant under the
influence of certain habits, gradually impover-
ishes the organ and ends by causing it to dis-
appear entirely."
In the discours preliminaire of the Philosophie
Zoologique, Lamarck outlines his work as di-
vided into three parts. The first is to treat of the
subject in general, of methods of research, of
artificial distinctions raised by man in classifica-
tion, of the real meaning of the term 'species,' of
the proofs of the 'de gradation' of organization
from one end to the other of the animal scale, of
the influences of environment and habit as causes
favoring or arresting the development of animals,
of the natural order and classification of animals.
In this first section is to be expanded his whole
theory of Evolution, which we will examine later.
In the second part he considers the essential phe-
nomena and physiological conditions of life, of
'orgasme' and irritability, of the peculiarities of
cellular tissue, of the conditions of spontaneous
234 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
generation. This section covers what we would
now term the general principles of biology. The
third part is devoted to the development of the
nervous system, sensation, action, and intelli-
gence, including a theory of the origin and for-
mation of the nerves, and of the development of
i^iental faculties and ideas, lower and higher;
here he treats of the relation of the mind of man
to that of the lower animals.
Lamarck's general philosophy of Nature
comes forth here. As a follower of Descartes^
he is, first of all, an advocate of the search for
secondary causes, as opposed to arrest with su-
pernatural causation. He believes that we see in
Nature a certain order originally imposed by its
Author, which is manifested in the successive
development of life ; we thus study natural forces
and Nature abandoned to its laws. In this sense
we see Nature creating and developing without
cessation toward higher and higher types. Exter-
nal conditions do not alter this order of develop-
ment, but give it infinite variety by directing the
scale of being into an infinite number of branches.
Lamarck denied, absolutely, the existence of any
'perfecting tendency' or entelechy in Nature and
^Descartes' "principal purpose was to explain the whole vis-
ible world, including the physical structure of man, in accord-
ance with fixed laws derived from the simplest facts of form and
motion. It was a philosophy of evolution as opposed to creation."
J. H. Bridges: The New Calendar of Great Men, 1920, p. 528.
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 235
regarded Evolution as the final necessary effect
of surrounding conditions on life. Thus, in his
teleology, he adopted the modern standpoint. In-
stead of suggesting that animals had been cre-
ated for a certain mode of life, he supposed that
their mode of life had itself created them: wings
were not given to birds to enable them to fly, but
they had developed wings in attempting to fly.
In his discussion of the ascending gradations
of life, beginning with the simplest and ending
with the most complex organisms of both the ani-
mal and vegetable kingdoms, he is thus freely
translated :^
In considering the natural order of animals, the
very positive gradation which exists in the increasing
complexity of their organization, and in the number
as well as in the perfection of their faculties, is very
far removed from being a new truth, because the
Greeks themselves fully perceived it; but they were
unable to expose the principles and the proofs, be-
cause they lacked the knowledge necessary to estab-
lish it. . . .
In consideration of this gradation of life, there are
onlv two conclusions which face us as to its origin :
Tlic conclusion adopted up to today: nature (or
its Author) in creating animals has foreseen all pos-
sible sorts of circumstances in which they would be
destined to live, and has given to each species a con-
'^Philosophie Zoologiqne, 1873, vol. 1, chap. VIII, p. 271; vol. 1,
chap. VII, p. 263. Compare Hugh Elliot's translation, 1914, pp.
130, 126.
236 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
stant organization, as well as a form determined and
invariable in its parts, which forces each species to
live in the places and climates where it is found, and
there to preserve the habits which we know belong
to it.
My personal conclusion: nature, in producing
successively all the species of animals, and commenc-
ing by the most imperfect or the most simple to con-
clude its labor in the most perfect, has gradually
completed their organization; and of these animals,
while spreading generally in all the habitable regions
of the globe, each species has received, under the in-
fluence of environment which it has encountered, the
habits which we recognize and the modifications in its
parts which observation reveals in it.
The first conclusion (Special Creation), he
goes on to say, is one which has been held by
nearly every one up to the present time. It at-
tributes to each animal a constancy of structure,
and parts which have never varied and will never
vary. To disprove the second conclusion (grada-
tion), he continues, it is necessary to prove that
each point upon the surface of the globe never
varies in its nature, climate, exposure, elevation,
and so forth.
The belief in the uniformity of past and pres-
ent changes was the next great factor in the de-
velopment of Lamarck's theory. It arose from
his contemplation of the data of geology in con-
nection with those of biology, as was afterward
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 237
the case with Darwin in so marked a degree. In
geology he was an ardent advocate of the doc-
trine of uniformity, as against the cataclysmal
school. The main principles are laid down in his
Hydrogeologie (p. 67) , that all the revolutions of
the earth are extremely slow. "For Nature," he
says, "time is nothing and it is never a difficulty;
she always has it at her disposal, and it is for her
a power without bounds, with which she makes
the greatest things like the least. . . . For all the
evolution of the earth and of living beings, Na-
ture needs but three elements — space, time, and
matter." Lamarck, unhke Buffon, did not touch
cosmogony; but in his observations upon geology
he learnt the first of all lessons, that in specu-
lating upon the past we should not regard it as
a period of catastrophe, that the true method of
study is to observe the steady march of Nature
at the present time, for its present operations
suffice to explain all the facts which we observe
in all its past. This led Lamarck to the extreme
of denying all catastrophes in geology and all
leaps or sudden transitions in living Nature.
*'Nature," he repeats, "to perfect and to diver-
sify animals requires merely matter, space, and
time."
After this review of Lamarck's self -education,
intellectual equipment, and the influences of his
collateral studies, we come to his theory of the
238 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
factors and nature of the evolution of life, which
he first expressed in the Philosophie Zoologique
of 1809 and fully formulated later in the His-
toire Naturelle (1815-22) into the four well-
known propositions:
Premiere loi. — La vie, par ses propres forces,
tend continuellement a accroitre le volume de
tout corps qui la possede, et a etendre les dimen-
sions de ses parties, jusqu'a un terme qu'elle
amene elle-meme. (Life by its own forces tends
continually to increase the volume of every body
that possesses it, as well as to increase the size of
all the parts of the body up to a limit which it
brings about. )
JDeuxieme loi, — La production d'un nouvel
organe dans un corps animal, resulte d'un nou-
veau besoin survenu qui continue de se faire sen-
tir, et d'un nouveau mouvement que ce besoin
fait naitre et entretient. (The production of a
new organ or part results from a new need or
want, which continues to be felt, and from the
new movement which this need initiates and
causes to continue. [This is the psychical factor
in his theory, which Cope later termed Archses-
thetism.])
Troisieme loi. — Le developpement des organes
et leur force d 'action sont constamment en raison
de I'emploi de ces organes. (The development of
organs and their force or power of action are
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 239
always in direct relation to the employment of
these organs. [At another point he expands this
into two sub-laws: "In every animal which has
not passed the term of its development, the more
frequent and sustained employment of each
organ little by little strengthens this organ, de-
velops it, increases it in size, and gives it a power
proportioned to the length of its employment;
whereas the constant lack of use of the same
organ insensibly weakens it, deteriorates it, pro-
gressively diminishes its powers, and ends by
causing it to disappear." This is now known as
the Law of Use and Disuse, or Kinetogenesis.])
Quatrieme loi. — Tout ce qui a ete acquis,
trace ou change, dans I'organisation des individus,
pendant le cours de leur vie, est conserve par la
generation, et transmis aux nouveaux individus
qui proviennent de ceux qui ont eprouve ces
changements. (All that has been acquired or al-
tered in the organization of individuals during
their life is preserved by generation, and trans-
mitted to new individuals which proceed from
those which have undergone these changes.)
In his earlier work the fourth law was first
expressed by Lamarck as follows :^
All that Nature has caused individuals to acquire
or lose by the influences of circumstances to which
they have been long exposed, and consequently by the
^Philosophie Zoologique, 1873, vol. 1, pp. 235-6.
240 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
influence of the predominant employment of a cer-
tain organ, or by that of the continued lack of use of
such a part — all this Nature conserves by generation
to the new individuals which arise, provided that
these acquired variations [change ments] are com-
mon to both sexes, or to those which have produced
these new individuals.
This law is now known as 'the inheritance of ac-
quired characters/ or better, to revive Lamarck's
original idea expressed in the word changements,
we should call it the theory of inheritance of ac-
quired changes, variations, or adaptations.
This transmission theory of Lamarck is seen
to be substantially similar to that of Erasmus
Darwin, and to depart from that of Buffon, for
Lamarck does not follow Buffon in supposing
that environment alone directly produces changes
in animals, either in their form or organization.
On this point he says :^
Circumstances influence the form and organiza-
tion of animals. . . . But I must not be taken liter-
ally, for environment can effect no direct changes
whatever upon the form and organization of animals.
In the Philosophic Zoologique he summarizes
his own environmental doctrine as follows:^
Great changes in circumstances bring about
changes in the wants of animals. Changes in their
^Loc. cit.y I, p. 223. ^Loc. cit., I, pp. 223-4.
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 241
wants necessarily bring about parallel "changes in
their actions. If the new wants become constant or
very lasting, the animals form new habits. ... If
new circumstances becoming permanent in a race of
animals have given them new habits, there will result
the preferred use of such a part and, in certain
cases, the total lack of use of such a part as has be-
come useless.
He illustrates his theory in advancing proofs
that it is not the organ which gives origin to the
habit, but the habit which gives origin to the
organ, and points out examples of the effects
of use and disuse. He refers all rudimentary
structures to disuse, such as the embryonic teeth
of the whale-bone whales which had recently
been discovered by St. Hilaire, the eyes of the
mole and of the Proteus, the blind salamander of
the Austrian caves. He is inconsistent with his
own theory when he says that the organ of hear-
ing has been developed everywhere by the direct
action of vibrations of sound. Again, he explains
the development of the webbed feet of birds by
their being attracted to swamp ground by hun-
ger and making efforts to swim by spreading the
toes, the skin being thus stretched between them.
His conception of the initial causal relation of
the desires and wants of animals is illustrated in
the following paragraphs:^
^Histoire Naturelle, 1835, vol. 1, p. 167.
242 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
I conceive that a Gasteropod mollusc, which, as it
crawls along, finds the need of feeling the bodies in
front of it, makes efforts to touch those bodies with
some of the foremost parts of the head, and sends to
these every time quantities of nervous fluids, as well
as of other liquids ; I conceive, I say, that it must re-
sult from this reiterated afflux toward the points in
question, that the nerves which abut at these points
will, by slow degrees, be extended. Now, as in the
same circumstances other fluids of the same animal
flow also to the same places, and especially nourish-
ing fluids, it must follow that two or four tentacles
will appear and develop insensibly under those cir-
cumstances, on the points referred to.
As illustrating the sensitiveness of lowly or-
ganized animals to the action of environment, he
cites a series of his observations upon the primi-
tive fresh-water Hydra when moving about in
search of light.
Numerous other examples are given of the
supposed origin of other parts of the body,
among which we may summarize his hypothesis
of the evolution of mammals and of the origin of
the hoof in mammals:^
All mammals sprang from saurians, more or less
similar to our crocodiles. They first appeared under
the form of amphibian mammals with four feebly de-
veloped limbs. These primitive forms divided in the
manner according to which they fed. Some, accus-
toming themselves to browse upon shrubs, became the
^Philosophie Zoologique, 1873, vol. I, pp. 252-3; vol. II, pp.
418-423.
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 243
source of the ungulates. Advancing upon the earth,
they experienced the need of having longer limbs,
their toes became elongated, and the habit of resting
upon their four feet during the greater part of the
day has caused a thick horn to arise, which envelops
the extremity of the toes of their feet. The other
mammals remained amphibious, like the seals.
He also explains the origin of the horns in the
ruminant animals by the efforts which they have
made to butt their heads together in their periods
of anger; thus has been formed a secretion of
matter upon the forehead. The types of rumi-
nants that have been exposed to the attacks of
carnivorous animals have been obliged to flee
and have thus acquired the habit of making very
rapid movements; thus have been formed the
types of gazelle, deer, and so forth. Such crude
illustrations certainly could not predispose his
contemporaries in favor of his theory.
He was still less happy in his account of the
loss of the limbs of snakes :^
The serpents having taken up the habit of moving
along the earth and concealing themselves among
bushes, their bodies, owing to repeated efforts to elon-
gate themselves and to pass through narrow spaces,
have acquired a considerable length out of all pro-
portion to their width. Since long feet would have
been very useless, and short feet would have been in-
capable of moving their bodies, there resulted a cessa-
^Loc. cit, I, pp. 244^5.
^44 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWE^
tion of use of these parts, which finally caused them
to totally disappear, although they were originally
part of the plan of organization in these animals.
It is eyident that Lamarck was forced to giye
such unnatural illustrations as these, because,
shut off as he was from experiment and further
obseryation, they were the only ones which came
within his range of imagination; with all their
absurdities, they present a semblance to the ex-
pressions of some modern writers.
In his theory of heredity, Lamarck postulated
the inmiediate inheritance of acquired modifica-
tions, which we haye learned today is the crucial
fallacy in his whole system. He did not expand
Buffon's theories in regard to the physical basis
of transmission. He brings out the results which
spring from free intercrossing, showing that ac-
cording to his theory, in the union of indiyiduals
which haye been subjected to different enyiron-
ments, the effects of enyironment would be neu-
tralized, whereas the crossing of indiyiduals which
had been subjected to the same enyironment
would hasten and perpetuate the transmission of
similar effects. To this principle he refers the
fact that accidental changes induced by the habits
of men are not perpetuated, since they do not oc-
cur in both parents, whereas the formation of dis-
tinct races in widely different parts of the world
is due to the uniformity of their environment.
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 245
Lamarck foresaw the great difficulties which
would arise in classification from his theory of
the filiation and mutability of all animal and
plant types, and he fully grasped the immediate
bearings of his theory upon the definition of spe-
cies. He v/rites: "Nature exhibits to us indi-
viduals succeeding each other, but the species
among them have only a relative stability, and
are only temporarily invariable." Quatrefages
remarks that he does not clearly distinguish be-
tween species, races, and varieties.
The definition of species was in Lamarck's
time the test of the creed of the naturalist. Isi-
dore St. Hilaire, in the Histoire Naturelle Ge-
nerale,^ gives us an interesting outline of the his-
tory of these definitions, beginning with that of
Linna?us, including Buffon's earlier and later
definitions and Cuvier's later definitions; La-
marck's is admirable:
A species is a collection of similar individuals
which are perpetuated by generation in the same con-
dition as long as their environment does not change
sufficiently to bring about variation in their habits,
their character, and their form.
Certainly no better definition of a species could
be given today.
We have seen that Lamarck's final conception
III, 1869, p. 410.
246 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
of filiation, or the idea of the branching {em-
branchement) of life, had not been reached in
1802, in which year he gives a vertical scale of the
succession of groups of animals quite similar to
that which had been developing on the false con-
ception of phylogeny from the time of Aristotle.
It is interesting, therefore, to place, side by side,
his first scale of 1802 with that of 1809 below,
also with the progressive table of 1815 {Histoire
Naturelle).
Une colonne vertebrale, faisant la base
d'un squelette articule.
TABLEAU DU RfiGNE ANIMAL (1802)
MONTRANT LA DEGRADATION PROGRESSIVE DES OrGANES
Speciaux jusqu'a Leur Aneantissement
Nota. — La progression de la degradation n'est nulle part
reguliere ou proportionnelle; mais elle existe dans Tensemble
d'une maniere evidente.
1. Les Mammaux
2. Les Oiseaux
3. Les Reptiles
4. Les Poissons
5. Les Mollusques
6. Les Annelides
7. Les Crustaces
8. Les Arachnides
9. Les Insectes
10. Les Vers
11. Les Radiaires
12. Les PoljT)es
Point de colonne vertebrale; point de
veritable squelette.
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 247
TABLEAU DU RfiGNE ANIMAL (1809)
&^
i2
a
Serie des Animaux
Inarticules
Serie des Animaux
Articules
Infusoires.
Polypes.
. Ascidiens.
Radiaires.
Vers.
Acephales.
Mollusques.
Epizoaires.
Insectes.
Annelides.
Araclmides.
Crustaces.
Cirrhipedes.
Poissons.
Reptiles.
Oiseaux.
Mammiferes.
In 1802 he expressly speaks' of the shaded gra-
dation in the complication of organization, not
as a lineal series of species, or even of genera, for
he says such a series does not exist. But he speaks
of "a series quite regularly gradated in its prin-
cipal masses; that is to say, in the principal
known systems of organization. Such a series in
this case certainly offers lateral ramifications in
^Recherches sur VOrganisation des Corps vivans, 1802, p. 39.
248 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
many directions, the extremities of which are
truly isolated points." This early conception of
the principle of divergence in Lamarck's mind
may be comj)ared to a fir-tree with a single cen-
tral stem and radiating branches. He says, in
effect:'
Such a natural series has recently been denied,
and some have substituted for a gradated series a
reticulated series, in which animals and plants are
spread out as upon a map. Such a reticulated series
has seemed sublime to some modern writers, and Her-
mann has attempted to add probability to it. But
those who study more profoundly the organization of
living bodies, and occupy themselves less exclusively
with the consideration of species, will see that this
view will have to be entirely abandoned.
Lamarck's later (1809) conception of the tree
of life, not as radiating from a single central
stem, but as branching from the roots into larger
and smaller stems, so far as we know was the
first of the great phyletic trees, the construction
of which has since occupied so large a portion of
the energy of zoologists and has been carried to
the farthest extreme by Haeckel.
In his second table Lamarck derives the fishes
from the molluscs ; but in a third table, published
in 1815, while it is of the same branching charac-
ter, he declares that he can no longer connect the
'^Loc. cit., pp. 40, 41.
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 249
vertebrates at any point with the invertebrates!
He therefore places them by themselves, with-
out attempting to filiate them. The third table,
therefore, represents Lamarck's latest views.
His true conception of phylogeny or animal
ascent and descent grew out of his appreciation
of the fact that many forms of life had become
extinct :
Those who have carefully examined large collec-
tions of species, are aware how they shade into each
other, and that when we find species which are ap-
parently isolated, it is only because we have not yet
obtained the intermediate forms. I do not wish to
say that existing animals form a simple and evenly
graded series, but that they form a branching series,
irregularly gradated, the gaps having been filled by
lost forms. It follows that the species which terminate
each branch of the series are related, upon one side
at least, with others which shade into them.^
As early as 1802 he held that affinities indicate
community of parentage and that it is necessary
to prove that the series which constitutes the ani-
mal scale resides essentially in the distribution of
the principal masses which compose it and not in
that of the species or even of the genera. As we
'^Philosophie Zoologique, vol. I, chap. 3. This very significant
passage indicates that Lamarck had a perfectly clear conception
of the principle of Evolution in its modern sense. This alone en-
titles him to the attribution by Packard (1901) of "founder of
evolution." It is to be valued quite apart from his special theory
of the causes of Evolution which we now know as 'Lamarckism.'
250 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
see in the above tables, Lamarck's attempts at
reconstructing the tree of hfe were crude, but
considering the infancy of palaeontology and the
entire absence of embryological knowledge, his
speculations appear more to his credit. He sup-
posed that mammals passed through amphibious
mammals back to saurians similar to crocodiles.
The seals or aquatic mammalia gave rise to the
Unguiculates or clawed animals, and when the
claws became too long the Carnivores made ef-
forts to retract them. Some primitive mammals
did not leave the water at all but lost their limbs
and became the Cetacea.
It is strange that Lamarck grasped the true
idea of extinction of the lower types, but not of
the higher types. He could not credit the extinc-
tion by any of the forces of Nature of such per-
fect forms as the Mastodon or the Palgeotherium
recently described by Cuvier, but he believed that
they had probably been exterminated by man or
that these species might still be found alive else-
where. He thoroughly believed in the extinction
of lower types — for example, of the Molluscs —
and that the lower types had given way to the
higher, the ranks of the lower types being con-
stantly replenished by incessant creation of the
lowest forms.
As animals progressed, new forms were con-
stantly arising in the primitive scale. One of the
v-s..
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 251
strongest objections which Lamarck had to meet
— one which shows that his theory of transmuta-
tion excited a lively discussion at the time, as
Darwinism did afterward — was the persistency
of certain lower types. When Geoffroy St.
Hilaire brought back his rich collections of mum-
mied cats and other animals from the tombs of
Egypt, and it was found that these were identi-
cal with the actual living representatives of the
same species and that these species had existed
without variation between two and three thou-
sand years, it was considered very strong evi-
dence against the transmutation theory. La-
marck replied that in Egypt there had been sub-
stantially no change of environment, that both
the soil and the climate had remained the same
during that great period ; such being the case, no
new habits had been imposed upon animals, and
the persistence of their characters was therefore
readily explained.
It is also noteworthy that Lamarck, adopting
for animals the indirect action of environment on
habit, adopted for plants a theory of the direct
action of environment, in the absence of any ner-
vous system whereby these organisms could re-
spond to external stimuli. He thus coincided with
Buffon in regard to plant evolution. He cites
numerous instances of rapid modification by
drought, by change of habitat, by cultivation,
252 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
and concludes: "All is effected by changes un-
dergone in the nutrition of the plant, in its meth-
ods of absorption, and in its transpirations, in
the quantity of caloric, light, air, and humidity;
finally, in the superiority which certain of its
vital movements can take on over others." In his
transfer from the study of botany to zoology,
Lamarck's interests seem to have been wholly
weaned from the study of plants. He does not
show the least glimmering of the ideas of the
struggle for existence among the plants, and does
not by any means enlarge Buffon's ideas upon
this subject.
In his speculations upon the origin of life, La-
marck at first seems to have rejected the doctrine
of abiogenesis, but later (1802) he placed at the
base of his scale of degradation progressive the
origin and continuous generation of the lowest
forms of life out of inorganic matter.
He believed that by little masses of gelatinous
matter, brought together by attraction, a tissu
cellulaire was formed, containing gases and vital
movements; that these little forms of life were
the original inhabitants of the globe; moreover,
that spontaneous generation of these organisms
was still going on.^
In the waters of the ancient world, and at the pres-
ent time, very small masses of mucilaginous matter
lOken's similar theory was not advanced until 1805.
FROM LAIVIARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 253
were collected. Under the influences of light, certain
elements, caloric and electric, entered these little
bodies. These corpuscles became capable of taking in
and exhaling gases ; vital movements began, and thus
an elemental plant or animal sprang into existence.
Possibly higher forms of life, such as infest the in-
testines, originate in this way. Nature is thus always
creating.
After studying Lamarck and finding out how
much there is of great value in his system, we
have to record that he exerted astonishingly lit-
tle influence upon the thought of his time, and,
in France at least, was followed by only a single
writer until revived by Comte. It appears that
Goethe never knew of Lamarck's philosophy.
This was partly due to the stigma which was
placed upon the transmutation theory and to the
strong opposition to Lamarck's doctrine by Cu-
vier, the most influential naturalist of the time.
As Lamarck retired from active life after the
loss of his eyesight, he became a less and less
known figure; he could take no direct part in
spreading his doctrines and he left the arena of
discussion open to Cuvier and St. Hilaire.
Lamarck, as a naturalist, exhibited exceptional
powers of definition and description, while in his
philosophical writings upon Evolution his specu-
lation far outran his observations, and his theory
suffered from the absurd illustrations which he
V
254 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
brought forward in support of it. It was such
examples as the method of evolution of the snakes
that gave Lamarck's critics their opportunity of
throwing all his ideas into ridicule; and from
some of these brief illustrations his critics spread
the impression that he believed animals acquired
new organs simply by wishing for them. His
really sound speculation in zoology was also in-
jured by his earlier and thoroughly worthless
speculation in chemistry and other branches of
science. Another marked defect was that La-
marck was completely carried away with the be-
lief that his theory of the transmission of ac-
quired characters was adequate to explain all the
phenomena. He did not, Hke his contemporaries,
Erasmus Darwin and Goethe, perceive and point
out that certain problems in the origin of adap-
tations were still left wholly untouched and un-
solved. Believing that he saw a great evolution
factor, and applying it to organic nature, he was
blind to its deficiencies and to every other factor,
and sought to establish it as a sufficient explana-
tion of every change in the animal world. His
arguments are, in most cases, not inductive, but
deductive, and are frequently found not to sup-
port his law, but to postulate it. Another defect
was his limited conception of natural environ-
ment, in which he was inferior to his contem-
porary, Treviranus. Treviranus and St. Hilaire
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE ^55
enlarged upon Buffon's view of environment,
while Lamarck did not. The greatest gap in his
reasoning has become obvious since his time,
namely, the assumption that acquired adapta-
tions are immediately inherited; this he took for
granted and never endeavored to demonstrate.
None the less we must close by placing La-
marck in the first rank of the predecessors of
Darwin. He was the first naturalist to become
profoundly convinced of the great law of grada-
tion and to place it in the form of a system; he
suffered social and scientific ostracism for this
conviction, but maintained and repeated his argu-
ments to his death-bed. There is a pathetic strain
in the avertissement to his Animauoo sans Ver-
tebres:
Avant d'atteindre le terme de mon existence, j'ai
pense que, dans un nouvel ouvrage, susceptible d'etre
considere comme une seconde edition de mon Systeme
des aniviaux sans vertebres, je devais exposer les
principaux faits que j'ai recueillis pour mes lemons
. . . ainsi que mes observations et mes reflexions sur
la source de ces faits.
Geoffroy St. Hilaire (1772-1844)
Geoffroy St. Hilaire, another of the distin-
guished French naturalists of the early part of
the nineteenth century, was long a colleague of
256 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWm
Lamarck in the Jardin des Plantes. After the
Revolution the Museum National d'Histoire
Naturelle was under a corps of professorial di-
rectors. A joint letter, signed by Lamarck "for
director" and by Geoffroy, "Professor and Sec-
retary of the administration of the Museum of
Natural History," reveals the keen desire of
these great naturalists for evidence regarding the
origin of species. This letter^ was written on Jan-
uary 30, 1796, to the naturalist Rembrandt Peale
at Philadelphia, inviting the interchange of lit-
erature and natural history specimens and re-
questing "all the works appearing on Natural
History in the United States."
Give us leave. Sir, to call your attention on the
subjects wich we desire to receive first. Those enor-
mous bones^ wich are found in great quantity on the
borders of the Ohio. The exact knowledge of those
objects is more important toward the Theory of the
earth, than is generally thought of. . . . We also
desire some species of quadrupeds of your climates.
They have some conformity with those of the ancient
continent. They are even been confounded with one
another. Nevertheless we think they differ as to their
species. ... It would be interesting to know what
degeneration their transplantation has produced on
iNow in possession of the author.
^Referring to the American mastodon discovered at Big Bone
Lick, Kentucky, which at the time excited the wonder of the sci-
entific world.
FROM LAIVIARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 257
their economy. They would lead us to a more exact
knowledge on the nature of the species and even of
the species in general. . . .
We cannot read the works of Geoffroy St.
Hilaire without perceiving that he was by birth
a philosopher and by adoption a naturalist. Al-
though his theory of the causes of the transmuta-
tion of species was profoundly different from that
of Lamarck, he belonged to the Buffon-Lamarck
school of evolutionary thought, as opposed to
the special-creation school of Cuvier; in sup-
port of his school he came into wide celebrity
by the famous discussion of 1830 in the French
Academy of Sciences. He added largely to the
evidences of 'filiation' and contributed several
entirely original theoretical 'factors' of transfor-
mation; nevertheless there is in all his writings
an undercurrent of doubt as to the extent of the
law of degradation. He was not a radical evolu-
tionist like Lamarck. Perrier, Quatref ages, and
the younger St. Hilaire have carefully studied
his opinions and history. St. Hilaire was a pupil
of Buffon, but as a thinker he mainly acknowl-
edges his- debt to the German natural philoso-
phers and especially to Schelling in his researches
upon the philosophy of Nature, although he does
not follow Schelling in his advocacy of the supe-
riority of the deductive method.
258 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
St. Hilaire's method was professedly, though
not actually, inductive. Ideas, he said, should be
directly engendered by facts. His conceptions
were often a priori, but his demonstrations were
always a posteriori. In his speculation upon
Evolution, we see that St. Hilaire was by no
means always consistent with his method, but
was very largely influenced by certain classes of
facts which came under his direct observation,
and reasoned from these to laws touching facts
of quite a distinct character. Goethe says of him:
"He recalls Buffon in some points of view. He
does not stop at Nature existing or achieved ; he
studies it in the germ, in its development, and
in its future. He projects the idea of unity, which
Buffon had just touched upon."
There were three branches of study in which
St. Hilaire was most deeply interested: first,
comparative anatomy; second, teratology or ab-
normal development; and third, what came to
be known as philosophical anatomy when he
finally embodied it in the Philosophie Anato-
mique, published in 1818. This was the work so
greatly admired by Goethe. The narrower range
of his studies, the dominating influence of his
'unity of type' principle and the sudden de-
partures from type seen in his teratological stud-
ies shaped the growth of St. Hilaire's limited and
peculiar view of Evolution.
Geoffroy has been mistakenly spoken of as
FROM LAINIARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 259
the philosophical successor of Lamarck. It is
rather true that he took up the general doctrines
of transformism at the point where Lamarck
could no longer defend them. As a remarkable
coincidence, Buffon, Lamarck, and Geoffroy all
became transformists at the same age of life.
The younger St. Hilaire shows very clearly, as
do Quatrefages and Perrier, that he was more
properly the disciple and expounder of Buffon.
He denied the inheritance of adaptations or
modifications acquired by habit which formed
Lamarck's central thought, and maintained that
the direct action of environment was the sole
cause of transformation, always regarding organ-
isms as comparatively passive in their milieu.
Thus he found it necessary to greatly differen-
tiate and extend Buffon's conception of environ-
ment, especially on its chemical atmospheric side,
attributing very marked results to its influence
upon the respiratory functions, as in his account
of the evolution of the crocodiles from the sau-
rians. It was between 1825 and 1828 that Geof-
froy published his memoirs upon the fossil teleo-
saurs of Caen, and connected them by theoreti-
cal descent with the existing gavials.^ Changing
environment and respiration were, he believed,
the chief factors in this transformation:^
^Recherches sur de grands Sauriens trouv4s a Vetat fossile.
Paris, 1831.
^Influence du monde ambianf pour modifier les formes animates.
Mem. Acad. Sci., XII, 1833, pp. 63-92. See pp. 76, 79.
260 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
Le monde ambiant est tout-puissant pour une al-
teration dans la forme des corps organises. . . . La
respiration constitute, selon moi, une ordonnee si
puissante pour la disposition des formes animales,
qu'il n'est meme point necessaire que le milieu des
fluides respiratoires se modifie brusquement et forte-
ment, pour occasioner des formes tres peu sensible-
men t alter ees.
This led him directly to an anticipation of the
^survival of the fittest' or 'natural selection' hy-
pothesis of Darwin. The atmosphere, acting
upon the pulmonary cells, brings about "modifi-
cations which are favorable or destructive {'fu-
nestes' ) ; these are inherited, and they influence
all the rest of the organization of the animal be-
cause if these modifications lead to injurious
effects, the animals which exhibit them perish
and are replaced by others of a somewhat differ-
ent form, a form changed so as to be adapted to
{a la convenance) the new environment.'" This
is a very striking statement of a principle of
heritable variation due to the influences of en-
vironment, and of the survival or extinction of
types according to the adaptive or inadaptive
character of the variation. Perrier italicizes this
passage and points out its anticipation of Dar-
winism.
Another highly characteristic feature of Geof-
froy's theory was that he included in it what has
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 261
recently been termed 'saltatory evolution' and
strongly opposed Lamarck's fundamental prin-
ciple that all transformation is extremely slow.
It is evident that this idea was suggested to him
by the sudden transformations observed in his
studies of congenital abnormalities. This enabled
him to maintain the principle of Evolution with-
out demonstrating the existence of intermediate
stages. The absence of connecting links and in-
termediate forms had begun to be a stumbling-
block to evolutionists; where, it was asked, was
evidence of a transition between amphibians and
reptiles, and between reptiles and birds? This
also enabled Geoffroy to avoid a difficulty he
himself raised, that characters of new forms of
life would not be maintained pure, owing to the
blends of interbreeding; these sudden saltations
or leaps from type to type secured the necessary
physiological isolation. Geoffroy thus anticipated
the now famous 'mutation theory' of Hugo de
Vries.
As a rapid transformationist, Geoffroy was
not, however, an imitator of de Maillet, who, we
remember, believed in the transformation of adult
forms. St. Hilaire denied the possibility of these
rapid leaps in the adult condition, and believed
that they took place mainly in the embryonic or
germinal condition, where the underlying causes
of sudden transformation were profound changes
262 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
induced in the egg by external influences — acci-
dents, as it were, regulated by law. As it involved
rapid, as well as gradual, transformation, St.
Hilaire's system did not always require the ex-
istence of intermediate hnks. For instance, he
advanced as an hypothesis the fantastic sugges-
tion that the first bird might have issued directly
from the egg laid by a reptile, and, as a bird
could not be fertiUzed or intercrossed by its rep-
tilian relatives, the new characters could not be
suppressed by intercrossing:
It is evidently not by an insensible change that the
inferior types of oviparous vertebrates have given
rise to the superior organization of the group of
birds. An accident, within the range of possibility,
and not very great in its original production, but of
an incalculable importance in all its effects, has suf-
ficed to produce in all parts of the body the condi-
tions of the bird type.
Finally, his attitude toward transformism,
as explaining all forms of life, was much less
positive and sweeping than Lamarck's. His view
of degradation may be summed up in this sen-
tence: "Species vary with their environment, and
existing species have descended by modification
from earlier and somewhat simpler species." He
admitted that the question to be decided by fu-
ture palasontological research is whether "the
FROM LAIVIARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 263
living forms of today have descended by a suc-
cession of generations, and without break, from
the extinct forms of the antedihivian period." He
looked for, and found, within his own reach,
proofs and evidence, in embryology, in the his-
tory of metamorphoses and in teratology. Not
even in speculation did he trace back all forms
of life to a simple prototype ; in filiation, or what
is now known as phylogeny, he thus narrowed
Lamarck's wide field of conjecture.
Discussion betaveen Cuvier and
St. Hilaire^
Into the higher region of generalization, which
Goethe took up only to abandon, few naturahsts
dared to stir. The followers of Linnaeus showed
themselves weakest w^here they attempted deduc-
tion, and we have contrasted the soundness of
Cuvier's comparative anatomy with the worth-
lessness of his speculation. The Buffon school
came into ridicule because of some of the wild
hypotheses in their earlier books, for neither
Buffon nor Lamarck knew when to apply the
curb. Excessive speculation brought a reaction.
After Kielmeyer, SchelHng, and Goethe, there
iPor a full account of this famous discussion see Perrier's
Philosophie Zoologique avant Darwin. It is also frequently al-
luded to in the Histoire Naturelle G&n^rale by the younger St.
Hilaire. It was immediately hailed by Goethe as a triumph of
principles to which he had devoted his life.
264 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
was a return to the older methods of simple ob-
servation and record. As we have seen, this was
partly justified by the fact that the whole phi-
losophy of the speculative writers, and much of
that of Buffon and Lamarck, was deductive,
rather than inductive. Geoffroy St. Hilaire
sought to revive speculation and place it upon
the true inductive-deductive basis in his Philoso-
phie Anatomique, but he, too, finally failed.
Beginning February 15, 1830, matters came to
a crisis: St. Hilaire read before the Academy of
Sciences at Paris, in the name of Latreille and
himself, a report upon the investigations of two
young naturalists. The conclusions reached in the
report were advanced in support of Geoffroy's
chief doctrine of the universal unity of plan of
composition; this was his central life thought,
leading him to emphasize the resemblances rather
than the differences between animals, and to lay
the foundations of what we now call 'parallelism'
or convergence in development. In this case he
was illustrating his principle by the supposed
analogy or parallelism between the organization
of some cephalopod molluscs and the vertebrates.
It seemed to Cuvier that these conclusions con-
stituted a direct attack upon himself, and this
brought on a discussion of the questions which
had been marking a widening gap between the
opinions of the two great schools founded re-
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 265
spectively by Linnseus and Buffon. Cuvier re-
plied by a criticism of the position of St. Hilaire
as to this 'unity of plan,' and rightly sought
to demonstrate that there were several distinct
plans of animal organization. He carefully ana-
lyzed the arguments brought forward, and
showed conclusively that in the types cited by St.
Hilaire the organs in their position gave evi-
dence simply of analogy and of resemblance, not
of a real unity of plan; that these molluscs led
to no other types. Further, he said that St.
Hilaire's method contained nothing new and that
it reverted simply to the views of Aristotle.
In following the details of this controversy, we
see that Cuvier was entirely correct in his ana-
tomical facts, and more or less wrong in his prin-
ciples; while St. Hilaire was wrong in his facts,
and right in the principle wliich he advocated.
The effect was to drive Cuvier, who issued from
this famous discussion with the greater eclat,
into the extreme position of recommending nat-
uralists to confine themselves solely to the expo-
sition of positive facts without attempting to
draw from them philosophical inductions. This
sharp issue, therefore, exerted a retarding in-
fluence upon the progress of inquiry into Evo-
lution; for Cuvier, in his brilliant lectures in
the College de France, threw increased weight
against the method and teachings of St. Hilaire,
26Q FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
as he had previously done against those of La-
marck.
Goethe (1749-1832)
Johann Wolfgang Goethe, the poet-natural-
ist, perceived the law of transmutation as a
naturalist, as an anatomist, as a botanist, as a
philosopher, and as a poet. His brilliant early-
achievements in science afford a striking illus-
tration of the union of imagination with a pas-
sion for observation and generalization as the
essential characteristics of the naturalist.
In these characteristics of genius as a biologist
he ranked above Lamarck and Geoffroy, but
when he took his journey into Italy the poetic
instinct began to predominate over the scientific
and science thereby lost a disciple who would
have ranked among the very highest, if not the
highest. Of this time Goethe says: "I have aban-
doned my master Loder for my friend Schiller,
and Linnaeus for Shakespeare." Yet Goethe, in
the midst of poetry, never lost his passion for
scientific studies. He seems to have felt instinc-
tively that what contemporary science needed
was not only observation but generalization. He
showed his own power of scientific generaliza-
tion in his famous studies upon the metamor-
phoses of plants, and in his perception in 1790
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 267
(later independently reached by Oken and
Owen) of the vertebrate nature of the skull,
which, indeed, was only a part of his contribu-
tion to comparative osteology and anatomy.
As a student in Leipzic and Strasburg he came
under the influence of Bacon, Spinoza, Bruno
and Kant; he was familiar with Linnaeus and
with the great French and German anatomists
of the close of the eighteenth century. He op-
posed the dominance of Linnaeus as to the fixity
of species in the following terms :
The conviction that everything must be in exist-
ence in a finished state, if one is to bestow upon it
proper attention, had completely befogged the cen-
tury , . . and so this way of thinking has come
down as the most natural and most convenient from
the seventeenth to the eighteenth, and from the eigh-
teenth to the nineteenth century. . . .^
Goethe partly anticipated Lamarck as an evo-
lutionist in his Metamorphoses of Plants, but,
unlike his French contemporary, he did not
formulate a system, although he made the most
substantial contributions to the scientific evi-
dences of the theory of descent versus fixity. It
is astonishing that Goethe never came across the
iPor this and other Goethe citations see Albert Bielschowsky:
The Life of Goethe, vol. Ill, 1912, pp. 83, 88, 95-6. We are in-
debted to Albert Bielschowsky for a masterly review of Goethe
the naturalist and to Professor William A. Cooper of Stanford
University for a splendid translation.
268 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
works of Lamarck; this circumstance Haeckel
truly calls a tragic loss to science, for Goethe
would have made the ignored and buried evolu-
tionary principles of the Philosophie Zoologique
known to the world. Goethe's inspiration was un-
doubtedly drawn partly from Buifon; he also
imbibed the Greek influence, and in his general
view of Nature, expressed in his Gott und Welt,
we see the ideas of God working in Nature and
of the unity of the development process. This
he also brought out in the dialogue between
Thales and Anaxagoras in the WalpurgisnacJit,
Here is unfolded the conception of the uniform-
ity of past and present processes in geology and
cosmogony.
It is not surprising that Goethe was appre-
ciated in France and that he was highly praised
by Isidore St. Hilaire. In Cuvier we find the
following allusion to his essays on comparative
anatomy: "One finds in them, with astonishment,
nearly all the propositions which have been
separately advanced in recent times." Richard
Owen, somewhat later, wrote that Goethe had
"taken the lead in his inquiries into Comparative
Osteology," and Carus said:^
If we go back as far as possible into the history of
the labors undertaken with the view to arrive at the
^Preface to Transcendental Anatomy,
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 269
philosophic conception of the skeleton, we find that
the first idea of the metamorphosis of the osseous
forms ; that is, that all forms are but modifications,
more or less traceable, of one and the same type ; this
idea belongs to Goethe.
Quite independently of either Cuvier, La-
marck, or Geoffroy — in fact, twenty-five years
before the FUlosophie Zoologique of 1809 was
published — Goethe made a brilliant anatomical
discovery in the separation of the two bones com-
posing tiie upper jaw of man, which he correctly
interpreted as proving man's anatomical kinship
and unity of type with the higher animal world.
He arrived at this discovery by comparison
of animal and human skulls of different ages.
Against the opinion of the most celebrated
anatomists of his time— Blumenbach, Camper,
and Sommering— he expressed his conviction of
the consistency of the osteological type in ani-
mals, ''from the simplest to the more complex,
from the small and cramped to the huge and ex-
tended."
The harmony of the whole makes every creature
what it is, and man is man by the form and nature
of his upper jaw as well as by the form and nature
of the last phalanx of his little toe. Then again every
creature is but a tone, a modulation, of a great har-
mony, which must be studied as a whole and in all its
270 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
grandeur; otherwise each individual part is but a
lifeless letter.^
Thus Goethe was the first to remove the sup-
posed anatomical barrier between man and the
apes and to declare his belief in the ascent of
man from the animal kingdom. Stimulated by
the physiognomic studies of Lavater and aided
by Loder at Jena, also by Merck, he wrote of his
great discovery:
In accordance with the teaching of the Gospel I
must hasten as quickly as possible to inform thee
[Herder] of tlie good fortune tliat has come to me.
I have discovered — neither gold nor silver, but some-
thing that gives me unspeakable joy — the os inter-
maxiLlarC' in man !
He gave a superb poetic interpretation" to the
influence of habit upon the shape and form of
this intermaxillary bone:
Thus by the animal's form is its manner of living
determined ;
Likewise the manner of life affecteth every creature,
Moulding its form.
This was Goethe's interpretation of the adaptive
influence of habit on form, and of the relation of
individual development or ontogeny to the past
^Letter to Knebel, November 17, 1784.
^Metamorphose der Tiere, W., iii, 90.
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 271
history of life, a principle which on his arrival in
Weimar he applied to the plant world — for bot-
any fascinated him no less than osteology. In
1790 appeared his Vcrsuch, die Mctavior phase
dcr Pflanzen zu erJddren, in which he revealed
to the scientific world an idea of creative power
continuing in operation, but decades passed be-
fore the scientific world recognized the value of
his conception.
When Goethe came out with his work in 1790 it
was little noticed: indeed, scientists came near con-
sidering it an aberration. To be sure, there was an
error at the bottom of it, but such a one as only
genius can commit. Goethe's only error consisted in
allowing his treatise to be published almost half a
century too soon, before there were any botanists
who were able to study it and under.stand it.^
Thus the germ of the idea of Evolution and the
proof of this idea through comparative anatomy
and embryonic development were contained in
Goethe's first scientific writings and discoveries
between the years 1781 and 1790. This was prior
to the publication of the Zoonomia of Darwin
and long prior to Lamarck's Philosophie Zoolo-
gique. It is not an exaggeration to say that
Goethe was the first to conceive Evolution in the
modern sense of the term and that his transfer
'Mliller: Goethe's letzte litcrarifiche TUtighcit, p. 54.
272 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
from science to literature retarded the demon-
stration of the evolution law by half a century.
The 'unity of type' hypothesis, especially in
the structure of the back-boned or vertebrated
animals, which exercised such a potent influence
in Europe, was developed in Goethe's mind a
few years later, namely, in 1796; this was the
conception which formed the chief basis of his
idea of Evolution :^
Thus much, then, we have gained, that we may
assert, without hesitation, that all the more perfect
organic natures, such as fishes, amphibious animals,
birds, mammals, and man at the head of the list, were
all formed upon one original type, which varies only
more or less in parts which are none the less perma-
nent, and which stiU daily changes and modifies its
form by propagation.
With him, this unity of type was broadly
based upon his own observations and was chiefly
a generalization of his own. This led him to a
correct explanation of half -developed or vestigial
structures, such as the os intermawillare, which
are among the strongest evidences of the law of
Evolution. He thoroughly understood the rela-
tions of the anatomy of man to that of lower
forms, and speaks of vestigial structures as fol-
iGoethe: (Euvres d'histoire naturelle (French trans, by Mar-
tins), 1837, p. 66.
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 273
lows: "These structures, which in lower organ-
isms are developed in stronger measure, and in
man, in spite of his higher organism, are not
wholly lost." It was this interpretation, as a
working hypothesis, which led to Goethe's most
brilliant achievement in comparative anatomy
above described, namely, his prediction of the
discovery of intermaxillary bones in man. This
raised a storm of opposition among contem-
porary anatomists which now seems hardly cred-
ible, in spite of which Goethe succeeded in veri-
fying his prediction.
Thus, Goethe stepped from observation to
generahzation and from generalization to the
working hypothesis, which he turned into use as
the guide to fresh research. He advanced upon
the truly modern scientific method; yet he al-
ways preserved the proper balance between ob-
servation and generalization. He said that if he
had once held Kant's conception of lineal descent
or filiation, as deduced by reason, and could have
undertaken lines of inquiry, nothing would have
prevented him from carrying out its proofs.
He was superior to all of his three contem-
poraries— Lamarck, St. Hilaire, and Trevira-
nus — in his realization that certain problems
were very far from solution; in a work, written
in 1794-95 but not published until long after-
ward, he remarked that "the question for future
274 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
naturalists will be to determine how, for instance,
cattle got their horns, and not for what they are
used." He thus, with Kant, felt the gap in the
lack of a natural explanation for the origin of
purposive structures.
Goethe's theory of the causes of Evolution, so
far as formulated, had the spirit of Aristotle
combined with that of Buff on and Lamarck and
is beautifully expressed in the passage Haeckel
selects from his Metamorphosis of Animals
(1819):
All members develop themselves according to eternal
laws,
And the rarest form mysteriously preserves the prim-
itive type.
Form therefore determines the animal's way of life,
And in turn the way of life powerfully reacts upon
all form.
Thus the orderly growth of form is seen to hold
Whilst yielding to change from externally acting
causes.^
In his Metamorphoses of Plants, published in
1790, we find Goethe's ideas of filiation or de-
scent clearly expressed. He here derives all
plants from a single original form, and all the
elaborate structures of the plant from the leaf.
iThis contains the Aristotelian 'matter and form' notion, to-
gether with a perception of the factors of Lamarck (4th line) and
of Buffon (6th line).
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 275
He called his theory 'Bildung und UmbildungJ
or 'Formation and Transformation.' Morj^hol-
ogy was Goethe's favorite study, and upon trans-
formation depended all his ideas of the descent
theory. Phyletic series and the methods of ascer-
taining them were wholly unknown to him, but
structural series, or the modifications of a primi-
tive type or archetype, exhibited successively in
the lower and higher types of plants and in the
lower and higher types of animals, were clearly
perceived, and, as we have seen above, they led
Goethe to a thoroughly philosophical interpreta-
tion of structures in all stages of Evolution, in
the three phases of development, balance, and
degeneration.
The 'Urbild,' or primitive type, was composed
of the internal original common characters — as
we would say, the *stem characters' — lying at the
base of all forms, and these original structures
were preserved by heredity. The preservation of
this hereditary type was opposed by a continu-
ous progressive development, somewhat in the
Aristotelian sense, and this was necessitated by
the adaptive reactions of the organism to the
outer world. The hereditary type is the centripe-
tal structural force, or specification, while pro-
gressive development is the centrifugal structural
force, or metamorphosis. Goethe prized highly
the conception of these two opposed forces, which
276 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
we now know as heredity and variation, or in-
heritance and adaptation.
Goethe's interest in science remained unabated
to the close of his life. As remarked by Biel-
schowsky:^
It is admitted in many quarters that at least near
the end of his life Goethe arrived at a clear concep-
tion of the idea of descent, and that in the last scien-
tific work of his life, his review of the remarkable
controversy between Cuvier and Geoffroy de Saint-
Hilaire, he gave expression to the idea by placing
himself uncompromisingly on the side of the latter.
But if that is true it is no less true that these ideas
had long been his own, for we have his testimony:
"This event is for me one of altogether incredible
value, and I have a right to rejoice that I have finally
lived to witness the general victory of a cause to
which I have devoted my whole life, and which is pre-
eminently my cause."
The movements of scientific thought were to
him of far more importance than political events,
as we learn from an account by Soret, quoted by
Haeckel,^ of Goethe's reaction in his eighty-first
year to the famous discussion between Cuvier
and St. Hilaire described above:
Monday, Aug. 2d, 1880. — The news of the out-
break of the revolution of July arrived in Weimar
today, and has caused general excitement. In the
iBielschowsky: The Life of Goethe, 1912, vol. Ill, p. 110.
^The History of Creation, 1892, vol. I, pp. 89-90.
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 277
course of the afternoon I went to Goethe. "Well," he
exclaimed as I entered, "what do you think of this
great event? The volcano has burst forth, all is in
flames, and there are no more negotiations behind
closed doors." "A dreadful affair," I answered ; "but
what else could be expected under the circumstances,
and with such a ministry, except that it would end
in the expulsion of the present royal family.^" "We
do not seem to understand each other, my dear
friend," replied Goethe. "I am not speaking of those
people at all ; I am interested in something very dif-
ferent. I mean the dispute between Cuvier and Geof-
froy de Saint Hilaire, which has broken out in the
Academy, and which is of such great importance to
science." This remark of Goethe's came upon me so
unexpectedly that I did not know what to say, and
my thoughts for some minutes seemed to have come
to a complete standstill. "The affair is of the utmost
importance," he continued, "and you cannot form
any idea of what I felt on receiving the news of the
meeting on the 19th. In Geoffroy de Saint Hilaire
we have now a mighty ally for a long time to come.
But I see also how great the sympathy of the French
scientific world must be in this affair, for, in spite of
the terrible political excitement, the meeting on the
19th was attended by a full house. The best of it is,
how^ever, that the S3mthetic treatment of nature, in-
troduced into France by Geoffroy, can now no longer
be stopped. This matter has now become public
through the discussions in the Academy, carried on
in the presence of a large audience ; it can no longer
be referred to secret committees, or be settled or sup-
pressed behind closed doors."
278 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
CuviER (1769-1832)
Georges Cuvier, the junior of Lamarck by a
quarter of a century, the successor of Linnaeus
and of Buff on, was the greatest zoologist of his
day and exerted an unparalleled influence upon
European thought. Although the leading op-
ponent of the doctrines of Lamarck and of
Geoffroy in particular, and of the methods of
thought which were surely leading to the demon-
stration of the mutability versus fixity of species,
he nevertheless demands a place in this history
because the new science of palaeontology which he
founded was destined to overthrow all the prin-
ciples to which he devoted his great talents.
It is interesting to note that in forming his
personal philosophy Cuvier reversed the order
taken by Linnaeus, Lamarck, and Geoffroy St.
Hilaire; for, starting with views very similar to
the most advanced held by Buffon upon the
mutability of species, he arrived at a point as
conservative as the early position of Linnaeus,
insisting upon the fixity, not only of species, but
of varieties. His definition of a species was of the
kind destined to prevail until 1858: ''All the be-
ings belonging to one of these forms {perpet-
uated since the beginning of all things [that is,
the Creation] ) constitute what we call species'^
[Italics my own.]
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 279
As head of the illustrious Ecolc des Fails, he
laughed, and set his pupils laughing, over the
^Philosophy of Nature,' characterizing it as 7a
tete de la tetc' It is, however, strange that when-
ever Cuvier left his anatomical and palaontologi-
cal studies for speculation, he was exceptionally
unsound; in his embryology he believed in 'evo-
lution' versus *epigenesis' ; in his Discours sur les
Revolutions sur la Surface du Globe (1825), he
advocated the doctrine of catastrophism versus
uniformitarianism. As geology began to yield
increasingly positive evidence of great successive
waves of life, of the extinction of older animal
types and the arrival of new unheralded types,
he was forced to abandon his original theory of a
single creation. As the chief founder of compara-
tive anatomy and palaeontology, he introduced
the modern conception of palaeontology as past
zoology. He first described Anchitherium and
pointed out its resemblance to the horse ; this is a
form which, perhaps, more than any other, is to-
day part of the most convincing fossil testimony
of Evolution, yet Cuvier failed to see in it proofs
of the 'filiation' hypothesis he was opposing. In
fact, according to Deperet,^
the ideas of Cuvier on the transformations of the
terrestrial faunas in geological times may be summed
1 Charles Deperet: Les Transformations du Monde Animal.
Authorized translation edited by F. Legge in "The International
Scientific Series," vol. XCIV, 1909, pp. U, 15.
280 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
up in the following points: (1) successive faunas are
entirely or almost entirely different from one an-
other ; (2) their extinction results from sudden revo-
lutions, that is to say, subsidences of the earth's
crust, followed by invasions by the sea of continents
once dry; (3) other revolutions resulting in the up-
heaval of mountain chains have again cast back the
waters and allowed, on the foundation of the dried
bottom of the sea, the constitution of continental soils
favourable to the expansion of new terrestrial faunas ;
(4j) these new faunas are not created on the spot,
but come from distant regions, their migration from
which has become possible owing to temporary
bridges between continents.
Deperet^ regards as unjustifiable the attribu-
tion to Cuvier of successive creations:
Nowhere in the work of Cuvier is the word [suc-
cessive] "creation" to be met with, and we have only
to read attentively the Discours sur les Revolutions
du Globe to see that in the mind of the illustrious
scholar it was simply a question of the invasions of
new animal forms suddenly arriving from distant and
unknown countries. Here the idea is fundamental
enough to warrant its quotation : "Moreover, when I
maintain," says Cuvier, "that the beds of rock con-
tain the bones of several genera and the friable strata
those of several species which no longer exist, / do
not assume that a new creation was n&cessary to pro-
duce the existing species. I simply say that they did
'^Loc. cit.i pp. lS-14.
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 281
not exist in the same places, and must have come
there from elsewhere. Suppose, for instance, that a
great irruption of the sea were to cover the continent
of New Holland with a mass of sand; it would bury
in it the corpses of kangaroos, phascolomes, dasyures,
perameles, flying phalangers, echidnae, and ornitho-
rhynci, and would entirely destroy the species of all
these genera, since none of them exist in other coun-
tries. Let this same cataclysm turn into dry land the
numerous small straits which separate New Holland
from the continent of Asia, and it will open up a
passage to rhinoceroses, buffaloes, horses, camels,
tigers, and all the other Asiatic animals, which will
thus people a land where they were until then un-
known."
. . . To Cuvier must be ascribed the honour of
having stated wuth admirable clearness and exactness
the highly important and fruitful hypothesis of the
renewal of faunas by migration.
The school of Cuvier, however, went beyond
its master, and Alcide d'Orbigny, d'Archiac, and
Louis Agassiz confirmed the theories of Cuvier
on the fixity of species and the almost complete
renewal of successive faunas. The views of d'Or-
bigny may be sunamed up as follows :^
From the first to the latest epoch of the animated
world we see appear at all points of it, at one and the
^Charles Deperet: Les Transformations du Monde Animal.
Authorized translation edited by F. Legge in "The International
Scientific Series," vol. XCIV, 1909, p. 18.
282 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
same time, a great multitude of different species be-
longing to all branches of the animal kingdom, of
which there are no signs in the preceding periods.
The first creation shows itself in the Silurian stage.
After its annihilation through some geological cause
or other, a second creation took place a considerable
time after in the Devonian stage, and, twenty-seven
times in succession, distinct creations have come to
repeople the whole earth with its plants and animals
after each of the geological disturbances which de-
stroyed everything in living nature. Such is the fact,
certain but incomprehensible, which we confine our-
selves to stating, with endeavouring to solve the su-
perhuman mystery which envelops it.
Cuvier's scientific and political prestige was
almost unbounded. His discoveries and recon-
structions of extinct animals were considered
brilliant. A favorite of Napoleon, he was able to
build up a great school in the Jardin des Plantes
and exert his political influence in keeping the
*transformists' out of position. He was followed
by De Candolle, the botanist, by De Blainville,
the palaeontologist, by Dumeril, the invertebrate
zoologist, and, in Germany, by Vogt and Bronn.
The great English anatomist and palaeontolo-
gist, Richard Owen, shared partly Cuvier's views
and partly those of Geoffroy St. Hilaire. Cu-
vier's greatest disciple was Louis Agassiz, bril-
liant in many fields of research and generaliza-
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 283
tion, but stout opponent to the very end of all
doctrines of transformism.
Treviranus (1776-1837)
Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus, a prominent
German naturalist and contemporary of La-
marck and Goethe, has the distinction of having
defined 'biology' as the science of living Nature,
in 1802. It is an interesting coincidence that both
he and Lamarck independently felt the need of a
comprehensive term for the principles underlying
botany and zoology, and that they proposed it in
the same year.^
Huxley has also placed Treviranus beside La-
marck as one of the founders of the evolution
theory; but a careful study of Treviranus' chief
work — Biologie, oder Philosophie der lebenden
Natur — does not justify our ranking these two
men together. In the other extreme, Treviranus,
as an evolutionist, has been too widely ignored.
He is not named by any of the French writers;
his own countryman, Haeckel, has clearly set
forth his position, but places him below Oken,
the chief exponent of transcendental anatomy.
We may therefore give a rather full statement of
his views. His Biologie was published in the same
year as Lamarck's first essay of 1802 upon
iSee note, p. 65.
284 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
gradation, but in the preface of his last work —
Erscheinungen und Gesetze des Organischen
Lehens, which was pubhshed in 1830 — Trevira-
nus states that he had reached his conclusions in-
dependently of and prior to Lamarck. Even in
this case we cannot claim for Treviranus great
originahty; for in his conception of Evolution he
does not advance very far beyond the standpoint
reached by Buffon in his middle period, and he
appears to us rather as a very careful student
and compiler not only of Buffon but of Leib-
nitz, Kant, and Schelling, all of whom suggested
more or less clearly the transmutation theory,
also of Linnaeus, Harvey, and Blumenbach. He
had, moreover, the advantage of the new palae-
ontology of Cuvier and of the travels of Hum-
boldt.
His point of approach to Nature is that of
the German natural philosophers. He places life
upon the chemical and mechanical basis, and in
his introduction enters upon the one side a vig-
orous protest against the purely speculative work
— die Trdume und Visionen — probably having in
mind his worthy predecessor Bonnet and others
whom I have placed in the speculative group. On
the other side, he protests^ against the dry sys-
tematic work which Linnaeus had left to pos-
^Biologie, oder Philosophie der lebenden Natur, 1802, vol. I, pp.
i-xu.
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 285
terity — his terms without his genius — a botany
and zoology devoid of all higher generalizations :
An author can have no sadder and more spirit-
killing duty than the reading and writing of com-
pilations. The teachings of Natural Science have long
been standing isolated like the pyramids in the des-
erts of Egypt, as if the value of Natural History
were not rather the application than the mere pos-
session of facts. What have Botany and Zoology been
hitherto, but a dry register of names, and what man
who has not lost his sense for higher work can find
time for these gymnastics of memory? But once re-
gard systematic work as a part of Biology, and no-
menclature as a means rather than as an end, and
both take their place in science, contributing to the
whole in which the intellect of man perceives the unity
and harmony of Natural Law. Even the work of
Linnaeus, as it does not reach the highest point, is
mere construction. The author will give opinion and
theory a place in this work, but he is far from those
who give their dreams and fancies a reality and per-
manence, believing that his own theories may perish,
and hoping to direct the current of thought in Biol-
ogy to adapt itself to Nature, and not to make Na-
ture adapt herself to the current of thought. Let us
not direct the stream of Nature, but be directed by
her. Let us publish a work w^hich will collect the nu-
merous thoughts lying scattered throughout the writ-
ings of Natural History, and this generalization will
have greater value than all the descriptions of new
forms.
286 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
Treviranus thus ranges himself with the school
of Buffon, Lamarck, Geoffroy St. Hilaire, and
Goethe, as against the school of Linnseus and
Cuvier. He believes it possible to discover the
philosophy of Nature, and his whole work is writ-
ten in an admirable spirit. In the succeeding in-
troductory chapters upon the interpretation of
living Nature, he considers the importance of
biology, its fundamental principles, possible sys-
tems, methods of experimental biology, as well
as the use of the hypothesis — that is, the working
hypothesis — as the essential weapon of progress
toward the truth. He defines biology as "the study
of the different forms and appearances of organic
life, of the conditions and laws under which these
exist, and of the causes by which they are kept in
operation." He points out^ that every part of the
organism is subservient to the whole, that Nature
never builds up one organ or system of organs
without causing others to suffer reduction. This
is equivalent to the 'lot de balancemenf of St.
Hilaire, or the modern law of ^compensation of
growth,' the deficiency of one part being made
up by the greater development of another. He
also, as clearly as Lamarck, perceives the causal
relation between function and structure. In his
conception of natural environment, he wuth
Schelling perceives that every class of animals
"^Loc. cit., p. 58.
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 287
exerts upon living Nature influences similar to
those exerted in the animal or plant by their
organs and systems of organs upon each other.
He has two chief thoughts in regard to envi-
ronment: first, the influences of life upon life,
and of life upon Nature; and second, the con-
stant revolutions of life and climate. He says
that the wider the limits reached by the action or
by the incidence or impact of environment upon
the living organism, so much higher the grade
of the organism must be. The lowest rudiments
of life — vita minima — are those in which the ac-
tion of environment falls with least specializa-
tion, and these rudiments mark the transition to
lifeless matter. This conception of environment,
as the action and reaction of life upon Nature
and of life upon life, he amplifies in connection
with the law of Buffon and Malthus that the
struggle for existence consists, not only in re-
production, but in reproduction increasing in
quantity according to the destructive influences
of surrounding life. An animal must have more
progeny as the number of its enemies increases.
We thus see that Treviranus breathed the
spirit of the most philosophical of his predeces-
sors and was essentially modern in his method.
We therefore expect to find an equal breadth of
view in his treatment of the problems of animal
descent or phylogeny. Here we are disappointed.
288 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
for we find only another proof of the insuperable
difficulties under which these early evolutionists
labored, in the comparatively limited knowledge
they possessed of the forms and successions of
life. As soon as Treviranus departs from these
first principles of biology and undertakes an ap-
plication of these principles to a theory of devel-
opment of animal life, he becomes more and more
speculative, and shows himself even more fan-
tastic than Lamarck in his approach to the truth.
In his conception of the processes of Evolu-
tion, we see him erroneously translating Buf-
fon's term 'denaturee,' by ^degeneration' ; for he
means by * degeneration' exactly what we now
term adaptation or modification, by the action of
external formative forces — in other words, both
development and degeneration — whereas Buff on
in the w^ord denaturee implied modification by
climate of an originally perfect type. His theory
of the causes of Evolution is very similar to that
of Buffon, as he traces degeneration solely to the
influences of varying external conditions, and
this he believes to be the modifying factor in sin-
gle organisms. The perpetual changes in living
surroundings bring about constant changes in
the organization of the body.
In the course of these changes old species are
destroyed and new ones take their places. He
brings out clearly the idea of the direct action of
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 289
environment in the elimination of species, groups,
and families, but does not assign this as a cause
of the origin of adaptations. Thus, many species
become extinct, while others become diminished
in numbers. Man himself exhibits the direct
modifying influence of his environment by wide
variations in his structure. The history of the
older geological periods is given us in the suc-
cession of fossils. Here Treviranus added to the
work of Cuvier the idea of progressive modifica-
tion in time, an idea which Cuvier never adopted.
Continuing to extend his evolution theory,^ we
find that he believed in abiogenesis, that every
form of life can be produced by physical forces
in one of two ways : either by coming into being
out of formless (inorganic) matter, or by the
modification of an already existing form by a
continued process of shaping.
. . . Wherever Nature has exerted her building
forces she has brought forth Autochthones, living
bodies,
. . . qui rupto robore nati.
Compositive luto, nullos liabuere parentes.
Wherever like conditions prevailed, of climate, earth,
water, atmosphere, and a similar geographical posi-
tion, these Autochthones were similar, and the species
^Biologic, oder PhUosophie der lebenden Natur, 1802, vol. Ill,
p. 224.
290 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
which developed from them remained similar as long
as the environment was unaltered. But in studying
the form of any particular country, it is very hard
to determine which forms are native or autochtho-
nous, and which have spread into the country by mi-
gration from other countries.
He then proceeds^ to propose anachronistic
theories of the abiogenetic origin of these Au-
tochthones :
But how did these species arise? Were they born
fully formed, like Aphrodite, from sea-foam? Or as
simple zoophytes? They could only have arisen by
the development from generation to generation of
similar forms; these primitive forms are the Encri-
nites, Pentacrinites, Ammonites, and other zoophytes
of the Old World, from which all organisms of the
higher classes have arisen. Each species has its period
of growth, of full bloom, and dechne; the latter is
a period of degeneration. Thus, it is not only the
great catastrophes of Nature which have caused ex-
tinction, but the completion of cycles of existence,
out of which new cycles have begun. Thus, in Nature,
all is in a state of flux and transfer ; even man has
not reached the highest term of his existence, but will
progress to still higher regions, and produce a nobler
type of being.
These sentences show that Treviranus did not
add anything to the main theory of transmuta-
^Loc. city pp. 225-6.
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 291
tion, although a strong advocate of it. His ideas
upon descent are much less clear and accurate
than those of Lamarck ; and in his views of the
spontaneous origin of some of the higher forms
of life, as shown in the sentences last quoted, he
is very far afield. Haeckel is mistaken when he
states that Treviranus refers to the lowest or-
ganisms in the term 'zoophytes,' for Treviranus
couples with this term such complex forms as
crinoids and ammonites. As to the factors of
Evolution, he does not advance beyond Buifon,
and in his general conception he virtually takes
the position held much earlier by Goethe, for he
thus summarizes his views:
In every living being there exists the capability of
an endless variety of form-assumption ; each possesses
the power to adapt its organization to the changes
of the outer world, and it is this power, put into ac-
tion by the change of the universe, that has raised
the simple zoophytes of the primitive world to con-
tinually higher stages of organization, and has in-
troduced a countless variety of species into animate
Nature.
BoRY DE St. Vincent (1780-1846)
Bory de St. Vincent would seem to have been
the only loyal successor in 1 nee of Lamarck,
of whom he was thirty-six yeai the junior. Like
his leader, he was both a natU ilist, and, for a
292 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
while, an army officer. In the former capacity, he
was for a time with the expedition of Naudin.
Quatrefages has given the following sketch of
his views :
In several papers, but especially in the article
* Creation' of the Dictionnaire Classique de VHis-
toire Naturelle, of which he was the editor, he
developed, in more than one point, the doctrines
of Buff on and of Lamarck, and drew from them
conclusions which belonged to himself.
Bory, inclining toward Buffon's theory that
new or modified species should be found in new
worlds, postulates the spontaneous daily forma-
tion of new species, not, it is true, upon our con-
tinents, which have for a long time been peo-
pled with both animals and plants, but only in
countries considered by him less ancient in for-
mation. He cites, for example, the island of
Madagascar, which he believes to have only re-
cently issued from the sea, under the influence of
volcanic forces. According to him, this island
contains more "polymorphic species than all the
terra fir ma of the Old World." On this relatively
modern soil he says species are not yet fixed.
Nature, in hastening to constitute the types,
seems to have neglected to regulate the acces-
sory organs. On the other hand, in the continents
more anciently formed, the development of
plants has, perforce, followed an identical route
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 293
for an incalculable number of generations. The
plants have thus become arrested in their types,
and do not present the variations so frequent in
new countries.
Bory thus introduces a new idea in his hy-
pothesis of the fixation of specific characters by
the action of a long series of ancestors placed
under constant conditions. According to him,
this, so to speak, is habit exercising its powers,
not only on individuals, but even on species.
But in this conception, without being apparently
aware of it, he places himself in formal contra-
diction to Lamarck, the master of w^hom he pro-
claims himself a disciple. We have seen, in fact,
that in the opinion of Lamarck, all organized
forms were being constantly modified according
to new needs, and it follows that each generation,
through the inheritance of acquired adaptations,
was separated more and more from its ancestors.
While with Bory heredity would have as its re-
sult the fixation of characters, with Lamarck it
is constantly causing them to vary, by accumu-
lating the little difi^erences acquired in each gen-
eration. In this point of view Bory must be re-
garded as an aberrant disciple of Lamarck.
Bory's idea of the fixation of characters by
heredity was subsequently taken up and enlarged
by his countryman, Naudin.
294 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
Isidore St. Hilaire (1805-1861)
Isidore St. Hilaire, son of Geoffroy, serves us
as a mirror of the further recession of opinion
from transmutation in France and the cumula-
tive influence of Cuvier. The tide of hostile influ-
ence in the absence of direct evidence was setting
too strongly against any form of the evolution
doctrine, and we find the son taking a still more
conservative position than that of his father,
whom, nevertheless, he loyally defended.
He advanced a theory of 'the limited variabil-
ity of species' (rather than of the mutability) in
his classic work, Histoire Generale et Particuliere
des Anomalies de VOrgamsation, 1832-7, and in
his Histoire Naturelle Generale des Regnes Or-
ganiques. He was undoubtedly swayed by the
difficulty of finding positive evidence for trans-
formation, and further by the negative evidence
of the stability of species afforded by the rich
collections of mummied animals brought back
from Egypt. Thus in his theory he dwelt upon
the limited variability rather than the mutability
of species, believing in transmission only to the
point of forming a new race.^
iThis is fully set forth in his Histoire Naturelle, vol. II, 1859,
p. 431. The Introduction Historique (vol. I, pp. 1-123) to this
work is an extremely valuable review of the origin and progress
of natural history among the Hebrews, Chinese, Persians, Egyp-
tians, Greeks and Romans, and in modern time down to the nine-
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 295
At the conclusion of his review of the history
of opinion upon transmutation in France, he
gives it as his own opinion that characters are
neither actually fixed nor variable, both depend-
ing upon the fixity or the variability of environ-
ment. New characters are the resultant of two
forces: first, the modifying influence of new sur-
roundings; second, the conserving influence of
heredity. When the former predominates, varia-
tions result, such as are seen among primitive
peoples and in the domestication of animals.
These variations among wild animals extend to
modifications of color and external characters,
but in domestication the differences are much
more marked. So much for changes going on at
the present time. As to past time, the 'theory of
limited variability' links itself with that of *filia-
tion,' or descent from analogous forms, as op-
posed to the 'successive creations' of Cuvier's
school or of migration of existing species from
other quarters of the globe. He concludes by
saying, very guardedly, that this acceptance of
the transmutation theory rests upon the actual
very limited state of evidence.
It is another striking coincidence that in the
very period (1854-62) in which this despairing
teenth century; it includes a full exposition of the philosophis
anatomique of the school of Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Schelling.
Published only five years before the Origin of Species, it con-
tains no mention of the evolution concept.
296 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
passage was published by Isidore St. Hilaire the
Origin of Species appeared (1859) from the
mind and pen of Charles Darwin. Thus the last
stages of the decline of the main 'transmutation'
movement in France were coincident with its
sudden and final revival and establishment in
England.
Naudin (1815-1899)
Charles Victor Naudin, distinguished French
botanist, is the last of the French precursors of
Darwin. He followed Lamarck in the general
transmutation doctrine, although he offered quite
a different theory of the causes of transmutation.
In an article entitled "Philosophical Consid-
erations upon Species and Varieties," in the
Revue Horticole (1852, p. 102), Naudin put
forth his views upon the origin of species, which
were published with some reluctance by the edi-
tors of that journal because of their supposed
heretical character, the theory of 'transmutation'
then being at the height of its unpopularity.
Quatrefages has outlined Naudin's views very
carefully, yet we cannot perceive with him any
evidence that Naudin anticipated the selection
theory of Darwin.
Naudin does not speculate upon the origin of
life. He bases his belief in transmutation upon
'unity of type,' as proof, not of a preconceived
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 297
plan, but of a common parentage. From common
sources existing species have issued through long
intermediate series, and the sum of their analo-
gies and differences represents their greater or
less remoteness from each other and from the
common source. From relatively few primordial
types Nature has given birth to all the organ-
isms which people the globe. He quite literally
follows Lamarck's conception of filiation as a
branching system, but he widely departs from
Lamarck as to the causes of Evolution. With
Goethe he sees in living organisms a 'plasticity,^
which renders them susceptible to direct modifi-
cation by environment and opposes the conser-
vative power of atavism, or hereditary transmis-
sion of type. As with Bory de St. Vincent, he
believes that the younger primitive types pre-
sented greater 'plasticity,' but that with advanc-
ing ages the forces of heredity accumulated and
became stronger.
Behind that 'plasticity' and 'atavism,' how-
ever, Naudin, somewhat after the Aristotelian
conception of the creation of form in matter,
places a higher power — 'Finality' — a mysterious
force, which, he says, some would call 'fatality'
and others 'providence,' the continuous action of
which upon beings determines the form, size,
and duration of each species in relation to the
order of things of which it forms a part. The
298 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
natural species is a product, then, of atavism
and of finality. By finality, Naudin evidently
does not imply an internal perfecting tendency
in Nature, but rather a continuous controlling
principle above the reign of secondary causes.
Naudin evidently felt the need of something be-
hind natural law in the production of the adap-
tations of Nature.
The following most interesting passage in
Naudin's paper, quoted below, is that in which
Quatref ages and Varigny believe that this author
anticipated the theory of natural selection :
We do not think that Nature has made her species
in a different fashion from that in which we proceed
ourselves in order to make our variations. To tell the
truth, we have practised her very method. When we
wish, out of some zoological or botanical species, to
obtain a variety which answers to such or such of our
needs, we select (choisissons) out of the large num-
ber of the individuals of this species, so as to make
them the starting-point of a new stirp, those which
seem already to depart from the specific type in the
direction which suits us ; and by a rational and con-
tinuous sorting of the descendants, after an unde-
termined number of generations, we create types or
artificial species, which correspond more or less with
the ideal type we had imagined, and which transmit
the acquired characters to their descendants in pro-
portion to the number of generations upon which our
efforts have been bearing. Such is, in our opinion,
FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE 299
the method followed by Nature, as well as Ijy our-
selves. She has wished to create races conformable to
her needs; and with a comparatively small number
of primitive types, she has successively, and at dif-
ferent periods, given birth to all the animal and veg-
etable species which people the earth.
We cannot find in this passage clear proof of
anticipation of Darwinism. As Darwin himself
observed :
I declare I cannot see a much closer approach to
Wallace and me in Naudin than in Lamarck — we all
agree in modification and descent. . . . But I can-
not find one word like the struggle for existence and
natural selection.^
The survival of the fittest, as due to the posses-
sion of favorable variations, was evidently not
in Naudin's mind ; still less is it in his system of
Evolution as explained above. A very careful
reading of this passage shows that in the com-
parison of methods pursued by man and by Na-
ture, his emphasis is plainly not upon the natural
selection but upon the natural succession of
types. Man causes types to succeed each other
artificially; Nature also causes types to succeed
each other; he does not say that Nature selects
the fittest types. A single passage like this is
often very misleading ; we must always study the
iLi/e and Letters. Letter to Hooker, Dec. 23, 1859.
300 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
author's whole context. A century earlier Buffon
had much more clearly expressed the idea of the
survival of the fittest species of plants.
VI
DARWIN
Es ist fiir Menschen ungereimt, aiich nur einen solchen
Anschlag zu fassen, oder zu hoffen, dass noch etwa dereinst
ein Newton aufstehen konne, der auch nur die Erzeugung
eines Grashalms nach Naturgesetzen, die keine Absicht
geordnet hat, begreiflich machen werde, sondern man muss
diese Einsicht dem Menschen schlechterdings absprechen.
— Kant.
Charles Darwin has declared his belief that, before leav-
ing England for the memorable voyage in the Beagle, he
was quite indifferent to any speculations upon the subject
of evolution — and this in spite of his admiration for his
grandfather's Zoonomia as a literary production. — Judd.
When I was on board the Beagle I believed in the per-
manence of species, but, as far as I can remember, vague
doubts occasionally flitted across my mind. ... I was
much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the
organic beings inhabiting South America, and in the geo-
logical relations of the present to the past inhabitants of
that continent. — Darwin.
DARWIN
The Evolution Theory during the First Half of the
Nineteenth Century — The Embryologists : Meckel, von
Baer, Serres — The Followers of Buff on: Herbert, von
Buch, Haldeman, Spencer — The Progressionists: Cham-
bers, Owen — The Selectionists: Wells, Matthew, Wallace
— State of Opinion in the Mid-Century — Charles Darwin —
Darwin and Wallace in 1858.
WITH Bory de St. Vincent, the younger
St. Hilaire and Naudin, the original evo-
lutionary movement among the naturalists of
France, which had begun with Buifon and ex-
tended over nearly a hundred years, came to a
close.
In the meantime, from the early part of the
nineteenth century, the seed sown in France and
Germany had been scattering. In England, on
the Continent, and in America, the evolution idea
found here and there a friend who passingly re-
stated, or slightly expanded, views already ex-
pressed by Buff on, Lamarck, Goethe, or Trevi-
ranus. Some original ideas also sprang up in out
of the way quarters and have been unearthed
from their hiding-places since the theory has been
established; we must place them, as it were, in
an alcove of this history, because they certainly
303
304 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
had little or no direct connection with the main
development of the evolution idea; they were
not put forth as part of a general system, and
exerted no influence upon either Darwin or Wal-
lace, with whom the direct observation of Na-
ture was the potent force. In Darwin's own
library, now conserved in Cambridge University,
the idea of the fixity of species reigned supreme,
especially in his personal copy of Cuvier's works,
to which Judd^ refers as follows :
Among the books in Darwin's library ... is a
copy of the fifth edition of the translation of Cuvier's
"Essay," bearing the date of 1827, and I think there
can be no doubt that this book was one of those con-
stituting the little library of reference in the chart-
room of the Beagle, where Darwin worked and slept.
Nor can there be any hesitation in concluding that
with the contents of this book he would be thoroughly
familiar.
. . . The views of Cuvier at that date were re-
garded as not less authoritative in geology than they
were in zoology, and in the introduction to his mag-
num opus, the "Ossemens fossiles," the opinions of
the great comparative anatomist were pronounced
with no uncertain note. He contended that each geo-
logical period must have been brought to a close
through the sweeping out of existence, by a great
cataclysm, of all plant- and animal-life, this being
followed by the creation of a perfectly new assem-
iJohn W. Judd: Charles Darwin's Earliest Doubts Concerning
the Immutability of Species. Nature, November 2, 1911.
DARWIN 305
blage of living beings. Cuvier's teaching was made
as widely known in this country as it was on the
Continent, for Jameson issued a number of editions
of a translation of the famous introduction, under
the title of "An Essay on the Theory of the Earth" ;
and, as von Zittel justly remarks, "Cuvier's cata-
strophic theory was received with special cordiality
in England." 13y none certainly was it adopted more
unreservedly than by Darwin's teachers and friends,
Henslow and Sedgwick.
Darwin, in his Historical Sketch of the Prog-
ress of Opinion, and Haeckel, in his Schopfungs-
geschichte, have outlined the views of these mis-
cellaneous contributors to the evolution theory.
The most surprising thought raised by a review
of the original works and of the passages quoted
by the above authors is that so many naturalists
came near the theory and were neither captured
by it nor drawn on to its further serious expo-
sition as the key to the history of life. Only one
writer between 1809 and 1858 came out in a
really vigorous and sustained defense of the evo-
lutionary system of the Universe. This was the
then unknown author of the Vestiges of Crea-
tion.^
We are now familiar with the main sources of
suggestion and can consider some of these writ-
ers more critically than did Darwin or Haeckel,
iRobert Chambers. See pp. 312-16.
306 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
from the standpoint of originality. It would be
interesting to know whether Wells, for example,
who so clearly set forth a natural selection the-
ory in 1813, had seen any of the other 'anticipa-
tions' which have been quoted. So with the other
'selectionists,' Matthew and Naudin. There was
a series of original writers who independently
approached Evolution upon the embryological
side, such as Meckel, von Baer, and Serres.
Others advocated or independently advanced
the laws of geographic variation suggested by
Buffon, of modification due to the direct action
of environment under the influence of wide geo-
graphical distribution. Among these were Her-
bert von Buch, Haldeman, and Schaaffhausen
the anthropologist. We find a partial revival of
Goethe's doctrines by the botanists Schleiden and
Lecoq. Lamarckism found very few followers.
The Greek idea of pre-existent germs of spe-
cies was revived by Keyserling. The Aristotelian
notion of an internal impulse or tendency to-
ward progression was more or less clearly revived
by Chambers in the Vestiges of Creation and by
Richard Owen in his essay. Nature of Limbs.
Other writers who expressed a more or less
positive belief in the mutability of species were
Virey^ in 1817, Grant^ in 1826, Rafinesque^ in
^Article, "Especes," Diet. d'Hist. Naturelle de Deferville.
^Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, vol. XIV, p. 283.
^New Flora of North America, 1836, pp. 6, 18.
DARWIN 307
1836, Dujardin' in 1843, d'llalloy' in 1846.
ChevreuP and Godron,' in 1846 and 1847, ad-
vanced views somewhat similar to those of the
younger St. Hilaire. We note also the anatomist
Joseph Leidy in 1850, the botanist T. Unger in
1852, Cams and Schaaffhausen''' in 1853, Lecoq
in 1854.^
The eminent German botanist Sachs has shown
how the botanists Brown, Nageli, and Hofmeis-
ter were approaching the mutability theory.
The Embryologists
Let us first glance at the embryologists, who
developed the law of recapitulation of ances-
tral history in the embryonic and foetal stage
of all organisms.
Meckel (1781-1833), t;o7i 5a^r (1792-1876),
Serres (1786-1868)
Meckel follow^ed Wolff (1735-1794) in the
series of German founders of embryology. Wolff
had emphasized the transmutations of structure,
^Ann. d. Sc. Nat., Se ser., t. IV, p. 279.
^Bulletirm de VAcadimie Roy. Bruxelles, t. XIII, p. 581.
^Consid^.rations Generates sur les Variations des Individus.
Mem. d. 1. Soc. Roy. et Centr. d'Agriculture, 1846, p. 287.
4Z)e VEspece et des Races. Mem. d. 1. Societe d. Sciences de
Nancy, 1847, p. 182. Published as a separate book in 1859.
^Verh. d. Naturh. Ver. d. Preus. Rhein, Ueber Bestdndigkeit
und Umwandlung der Arten, Bonn, 1853.
^Etudes s. I. Geographie Botanique de VEurope, Paris, 1854,
p. 199.
308 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
so that from seeds on the one side and eggs on
the other came the many and diverse organisms.
Meckel more clearly anticipated von Baer in
1811, in the passage: "There is no good physiolo-
gist who has not been struck, incidentally, by the
observation that the original form of all organ-
isms is one and the same, and that out of this one
form, all, the lowest as well as the highest, are
developed in such a manner that the latter pass
through the permanent forms of the former as
transitory stages."
Von Baer, in 1834, in a lecture entitled "The
Most General Laws of Nature in all Develop-
ment," maintained that "only in a very childish
view of nature could organic species be regarded
as permanent and unchangeable types, and that
in fact they can be only passing series of genera-
tions, which have developed by transformation
from a common original form."^
Serres^ enlarged the arguments of Meckel and
showed that the missing links in the chain of
Evolution may all be discovered, if we seek them,
in the life of the embryo. When we compare ani-
mals that have arrived at their complete devel-
opment, we find many differences between them;
but if we compare them during their successive
stages of Evolution, we see that these differ-
IHaeckel: The History of Creation, 1892, vol. I, p. 112.
2Pr4cis d'Anatomie Transcendante, 1842, p. 90.
DARWIN S09
ences were preceded by resemMances ; that, in
fact, comparative anatomy is an arrested em-
bryology, and embryology a transitory compara-
tive anatomy.
The Followers of Buffon
Among those who took up, more especially, the
ideas of Buffon and Linnaeus, was the Reverend
W. Herbert, in his work on the Amaryllidacece,
1837, in which he declares that "horticultural ex-
periments have established, beyond the possibility
of refutation, that botanical species are only a
higher and more permanent class of varieties";
that single species of each genus were created in
an originally plastic condition, and that these
produced, by intercrossing and by variation, all
our existing species. He thus takes a point mid-
way between Linnaeus and Buffon.
Von Buck (1773-1853)
Another Buffonian was Christian Leopold von
Buch, a well-known naturalist and geologist. We
find that in 1825 he is struck, like Humboldt,
with the problem raised by the geographical dis-
tribution of plants; unlike the great traveler, he
does not hesitate, but proceeds to solve it. He
says :^
lEssay translated in 1836 as Physical Description of the Canary
Islands. See Haeckel: The History of Creation, 1892, vol. I, pp.
109-10.
310 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
The individuals of genera, on continents, spread
and widely diffuse themselves, and owing to differ-
ences of localities, nourishment, and soil, form vari-
eties ; and in consequence of their isolation and never
being crossed by other varieties and so brought back
to the main type, they, in the end, become a perma-
nent and distinct species. Then, perhaps, in other
ways, they meet with other descendants of the orig-
inal form — which have likewise become new varieties
— and both now appear as very distinct species, no
longer mingling with one another. Not so on islands.
Being commonly confined in narrow valleys, or within
the limit of small zones, individuals can reach one
another and destroy every commencing production
of a permanent variety.
We find in von Buch a clear conception of the
force of geographic isolation or segregation,
which had been observed by Buffon, as we have
seen; his theory of Evolution is also that of the
direct action of environment, advocated by Buf-
fon and St. Hilaire.
Haldeman (1812-1880)
In 1844 Haldeman gave a full discussion of
the arguments for and against the *Lamarckian
hypothesis,' in a paper^ entitled Enumeration
of the Recent Fresh-water Mollusca which are
Common to North America and Europe, He
"^Bost. Journ. Nat. HisU 184S-4.
DARWIN 311
wrote, apparently, from Lyell's exposition of
Lamarck, rather than from the original author
himself. He inchned strongly to the transmuta-
tion theory, although hesitating to offer a direct
opinion. As to the causes of modification, he
ignores Lamarck's special theory of the trans-
mission of acquired characters, and tends rather
to adopt Buffon's factor of the direct action of
the environment.
Spencer (1820-1903)
Herbert Spencer appeared as one of the few
out-and-out evolutionists before the publication
of the Origin of Species. In his articles, Illogical
Geology and The Development Hypothesis, he
strongly contrasts the difficulties of the special
creation hypothesis with the arguments for de-
velopment, and as already pointed out (p. 22)
in his Nebular Hypothesis he argues in favor of
^'creation by evolution." He does not enter into
the question of the factors or causes of Evolution,
although such passages^ as the following might
be interpreted as showing his inclination to
Buffon's theory of the direct action of the en-
vironment :
Any existing species — animal or vegetable — when
placed under conditions different from its previous
^The Development Hypothesis, 1852.
312 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWE^J
ones, immediately begins to undergo certain changes
fitting it for the new conditions. . . . There is at
work a modifying influence of the kind they assign
as the cause of these specific differences.
The Progressionists
Robert Chambers, Richard Owen, and in a
measure Louis Agassiz, should be classed as
'Progressionists.' The first-named has been thus
aptly classified because of his belief in an 'internal
perfecting' or 'progressing' principle.
Chambers (1802-1871)
In 1844 appeared in England The Vestiges of
the Natural History of Creation, the only vol-
ume wholly devoted to Evolution in the half -cen-
tury between the Philosophie Zoologique of 1809
and the Origin of Species of 1859. Published
anonymously, it was attributed to Robert Cham-
bers because of his liberal views and considerable
knowledge of geology.^
Although intelligently and reverently writ-
ten, the Vestiges met a scathing reception from
the reviewers upon the score of false science and
infidelity. We may, in part, excuse the author
for preserving the somewhat invalorous incog-
lln 1884, in publishing the 12th edition of this work, the editor,
Alexander Ireland, gave an account of the authorship, as there
was no longer any reason for concealing it.
DARWIN 313
nito, when we read in the North British Review:
"Prophetic of infidel times, and indicating the
unsoundness of our general education, the Ves-
tiges has started into public favor with a fair
chance of poisoning the fountains of science, and
sapping the foundations of religion." The great
sensation which this book caused and its rapid
sale through ten editions in nine years (1844-
1853) are proof that the truth of Evolution was
ready to burst forth like a volcano and that the
times were ripe for Darwin. The volume was the
strongest presentation of the scientific evidences
for Cosmic Evolution versus Special Creation
which had appeared; it was even stronger and
broader than the Philosophie Zoologique of La-
marck. We find that the author begins with the
solar system; his middle point is the origin of
life from inorganic matter, and his final point is
man as the highest development of the animal
kingdom. Of man's origin he says:^
The idea that any of the lower animals were con-
cerned in the origin of Man, is usually scouted by re-
flecting persons as derogatory to human dignity.
. . . Our children, it may be said, are the represen-
tatives of the first simple and impulsive men of the
earth; the lower animals represent the earlier pre-
human stages of life. The right conception of the
case is, that in these stages we are not to look for
^Vestiges of Creation, 1884, pp. 234-6.
314 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
what is venerable, but, on the contrary, for what is
humble and elementary. We are to expect but the pri-
mitice of man's masterful life — something not even
ascending to the dignity of "the infant mewling in its
nurse's arms." If thus prepared, we should experi-
ence no shock on hearing that the human form was
preceded genealogically by others of humbler aspect.
A deep moral principle seems involved in the history
of the origin of man. He is the undoubted chief of all
creatures, and as such may well have a character and
destiny in some respects peculiar and far exalted
above the rest; but it appears that his relation to
them is, after all, one of kinship.
The work shows the author's thorough famil-
iarity with Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck,
St. Hilaire, and Series. In the first edition of
1844 (p. 174), he rejects Lamarck's hypothesis
of the origin of adaptations by the choice of the
animal, "which has incurred much ridicule and
scarcely ever had a single defender," on the
ground that the arbitrary modification of form
by the needs of the animal could never have led
to the unities and analogies of structure which
we observe.
On the previous page he advocates (without
credit) St. Hilaire's modification of BufTon's
hypothesis of the direct action of environment.
Light, heat, the chemical constitution of the at-
mosphere, he says, "may have been the imme-
DARWIN 315
diate prompting cause of all those advances from
species to species which we have seen, upon other
grounds, to be necessarily supposed as having
taken place"; he continues that these ideas are
merely thrown out as hints toward the formation
of a just hypothesis which will come with ad-
vancing knowledge. He considers these natural
laws as instruments in working out and realizing
all the forms of being of the original Divine
Conception.
These philosophic views were more definitely
expressed in the tenth edition, which appeared
in 1853. Here (p. 155) he gives as his final opin-
ion that the animal series is the result, first, of an
impulse, imparted by God, advancing all the
forms of life, through the various grades of or-
ganization, from the lowest to the highest plants
and animals; this is the Aristotehan 'internal
perfecting principle' somewhat modified by mod-
ern theology. As this first 'perfectmg' impulse
might manifestly produce types not at all fitted
to their environment, the author adds a second
impulse, tending to modify organic structures in
accordance with their environment, food, nature
of the habitat, and meteoric agencies, and thus
to produce the 'adaptations' of the natural phi-
losopher.
This progressive advance of plants and ani-
mals with modification would also leave a gap at
316 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
the bottom of the scale. To fill this gap, the au-
thor, like Lamarck, supposes that there is a con-
tinuous spontaneous generation of the lowest
forms of life, of primordial nucleated vesicles,
the meeting-point between the organic and in-
organic ; this generation he believes to be an elec-
tro-chemical operation.
Owen (1810-1892)^
Richard Owen, Darwin's junior by a year,
whose death marked the last of the old school,
was the leading comparative anatomist of the
w^orld in the period after Cuvier, with whom he
studied. He was not, however, a scientific suc-
cessor of Cuvier in a strict sense, but followed
also St. Hilaire and Oken in transcendental
anatomy and in a guarded acceptance of the
transmutation theory. From Oken and Goethe
he developed his famous, but now wholly dis-
carded, 'archetypal' theory of the skull, as de-
rived from the modifications of several successive
vertebrae; the idea of perfect archetypal type
forms as ancestral to modern, degenerate, or
vestigial types seems also to have been his central
thought in connection with Evolution.
The vast range of Owen's knowledge in com-
iSee Osborn: Richard Owen and the Evolution Movement.
DARWIN 317
parative anatom3% osteology, and palaeontology
brought within his view series of animal struc-
tures in all stages of usefulness, and especially
those which were transitory or vestigial in exist-
ing species and functional or well-developed in
extinct species. Thus in his essay on The Nature
of Limbs, in 1849, he wrote (p. 86) : "The Arche-
typal idea was manifested . . . long prior to the
existence of those animal species that actually
exemplify it." In the same work we find the fol-
lowing passage: "To what natural laws or sec-
ondary causes the orderly succession and pro-
gression of such organic phenomena may have
been committed we as yet are ignorant." This
was a revival of the Aristotelian concept of
*form' and 'matter.' Again, in 1858, in his ad-
dress before the British Association, he spoke of
the axiom "o/ the continuous operation of crea-
tive power, or ordained becoming of living
things'' — ^indicating that his belief in the discov-
ery of natural law was limited by his belief in
the continuous operation of a supernatural law.
He, however, cited the Apteryx, a wingless bird
of New Zealand, with its excessively degenerate
wings, as shaking our confidence in the theory of
Special Creation.
It thus appears that, prior to the publication
of Darwin's work, Owen was an evolutionist to
a limited degree, somewhat in the manner of
318 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
Buff on; that is, in holding to the production of
many modern species by modifications chiefly in
the nature of degeneration from older and more
perfect types. There is no evidence whatever that
he was an evolutionist in the large, comprehensive
sense of Lamarck.
In 1859, upon the publication of the Origin of
Species, Owen took an unfortunate position of
hostility to the evidences for the natural causes
of Evolution which Darwin sought to establish,
and at the same time claimed that he had long
held a belief in transmutation. In the preface of
his Anatomy of Vertebrates, published in 1866,
we find the following statement :
With every disposition to acquire information and
receive instruction, as to how species become such, I
am still compelled, as in 1849, to confess ignorance
of the mode of operation of the natural law or sec-
ondary cause of their succession on the earth. But
that it is an 'orderly succession,' or according to
law, and also 'progressive,' or in the ascending
course, is evident from actual knowledge of extinct
species.
He then goes on to say that the basis of belief
in the succession and progression of species was
laid in three ways, namely, by the demonstration
of the unity of plan as shown in special and gen-
eral homologies (Vicq d'Azyr and St. Hilaire),
DARWIN 319
by the comparison of embryonic stages of higher
animals with the adult forms of lower animals
(Meckel, von Baer), and by the succession of
[extinct] species in time. In some of his lectures
he is said to have held that a limited degree of
degeneration is due to disuse. He concludes :
How inherited, or what ma}^ be the manner of
operance of the secondary cause in the production of
species, remains in the hypothetical state exemplified
by the guess-endeavours of Lamarck, Darwin, Wal-
lace, and others.
Toward the end of his life Owen apparently
relaxed this attitude of hostility toward modern
Evolution, for in discussing Platy podosaurus^ he
says r
One may also conjecture, on the derivative hy-
pothesis, that the higher class of Vertebrates, as
represented by the low ovoviviparous group now lim-
ited to Australasia, may have branched off from a
family of Triassic Reptilia represented, and at pres-
ent known only, by the fragmentary evidences of
such extinct kinds as that which forms the subject of
the present communication.
iQuart Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. XXXVI, 1880, p. 423.
^Letter to author from Doctor Robert Broom. Doctor Broom
also writes (July 28, 1928): "I had a letter from Owen in 1890—
two years before his death — in which he quite approved of a sug-
gestion of mine that the thickened epithelium on the jaws of
early mammalian foetuses probably represented the remains of a
honey -sucking beak in the ancestral young. The theory may be
quite wrong, but certainly shows that Owen in 1880-1890 thought
in terms of Evolution."
320 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
The Selectionists
The modern theory of natural selection was
expressed first by Doctor W. C. Wells, in 1813,
then by St. Hilaire the elder, then by Matthew
in 1831, and finally, with considerably less clear-
ness, by Naudin in 1852.
Wells (1757-1817), Matthew ( ? ),
Wallace {1S2S-191S)
Darwin gives us references to the two English
writers. That of Wells is the first statement of
the theory of the survival, not simply of fittest
organisms, as understood by previous writers,
such as Buff on and Treviranus, but of races sur-
viving because of their possession of favorable
variations in a single character.
Wells' paper, read before the Royal Society
in 1813, was entitled, An Account of a White
Female, part of whose Skin resembles that of a
Negro; it was not published until 1818.^ He here
recognizes the principle of natural selection as
applied to the races of men and to the explana-
tion of the origin of the dark coloring of the skin
in the negro races of Central Africa. In Darwin's
words :^
iSee his Two Essays upon Dew and Single Vision.
^Origin of Species^ last edition: An Historical Sketch.
DARWIN 321
After remarking that negroes and mulattoes enjoy
an immunity from certain tropical diseases, he ob-
serves, firstly, that all animals tend to vary in some
degree, and, secondly, that agriculturists improve
their domesticated animals by selection ; and then, he
adds, but what is done in this latter case "by art,
seems to be done with equal efficacy, though more
slowly, by nature, in the formation of varieties of
mankind, fitted for the country which they inhabit.
Of the accidental varieties of man, which would occur
among the first few and scattered inhabitants of the
middle regions of Africa, some one would be better
fitted than the others to bear the diseases of the coun-
try. This race would consequently multiply, while the
others would decrease ; not only from their inability
to sustain the attacks of disease, but from their in-
capacity of contending with their more vigorous
neighbours. The colour of this vigorous race I take
for granted, from what has been already said, would
be dark. But the same disposition to form varieties
still existing, a darker and a darker race would in the
course of time occur ; and as the darkest would be the
best fitted for the climate, this would at length be-
come the most prevalent, if not the only race, in the
particular country in which it had originated."
This is certainly the most complete of all the
anticipations of Darwin's theory of natural se-
lection.
In 1831 Patrick Matthew published a work
entitled Naval Timber and Arboriculture. It
contained, in an appendix, a brief statement of
322 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
a theory of the origin of species, of which Dar-
win says :^
The differences of Mr. Matthew's views from mine
are not of much importance: he seems to consider
that the world was nearly depopulated at successive
periods, and then restocked; and he gives as an al-
ternative, that new forms may be generated "without
the presence of any mould or germ of former aggre-
gates" [abiogenesis] . I am not sure that I under-
stand some passages ; but it seems that he attributes
much influence to the direct action of the conditions
of life. He clearly saw, however, the full force of the
principle of natural selection.
Mr. Matthew was not satisfied with this hand-
some recognition of his priority and is said to
have placed on a subsequent title-page, after his
name, "Discoverer of the principle of Natural
Selection."
In 1855 appeared an article^ by Alfred Rus-
sel Wallace, "On the Law which has regulated
the Introduction of New Species." This con-
tains a very strong argument for the theory of
descent, as explaining the facts of classification,
of distribution, and of succession of species in
geological time during the great changes upon
the earth. Wallace at this time showed himself
'^Loc. cit.
^Annals and Magazine of Natural History, September, 1855.
Republished in 1870 in Contributions to the Theory of Natural
Selection. A Series of Essays. Macmillan & Co., London.
DARWIN 323
a strong and fearless evolutionist, although he
had not apparently arrived at his subsequent se-
lection theory of the causes of change/
State of Opinion in the Mid-Century
In all that has passed in these chapters the
anti-evolutionists have been kept in the back-
ground, yet they formed the great working ma-
jority in numbers and scientific influence. By
considering only the evolutionists we have wholly
lost the perspective of opinion in the mid-cen-
tury. This perspective must be regained in order
to appreciate the revolution of thought brought
about by Darwin.
The very apologetic tone in which Darwin
himself confessed to Hooker, Lyell, and Gray, in
turn, his nascent belief in the mutability of spe-
cies, proves that he did not consider this evolu-
tionary belief as an enviable or altogether desir-
able possession. "I formerly spoke," Darwin
wrote, "to very many naturalists on the subject
of Evolution, and never once met with any sym-
pathetic agreement. It is probable that some did
then believe in Evolution, but they were either
silent or expressed themselves so ambiguously,
that it was not easy to understand their mean-
ing." Later, after the publication of the Origin,
Darwin longed to "convince Hooker, Lyell, and
^See Osborn: Impressions of Great Naturalists.
324 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
Huxley that species are mutable," and, in reply-
to Huxley's somewhat guarded acceptance of
his descent theory, he wrote that "like a good
Catholic who has received extreme unction, I can
now sing 'nunc dimiftis.' " Think now of con-
vincing this high priest of Evolution!
In America, the great botanist Asa Gray was
one of the first to espouse Darwin's cause. In
France, which we have found to be the home of
the modern theory for nearly a century. Evolu-
tion came as an unwelcome returning exile. As
in England, opinion had finally become settled
upon the fixity of species. A proffered transla-
tion of the Origin was contemptuously rejected
by a publishing firm in Paris. Darwin craved an
open-minded audience, which was almost impos-
sible to find on the Continent. "Do you know of
any good and speculative foreigners to whom it
would be worth while to send my book?" he wrote
to Huxley.
This is all by way of evidence of the well-
known fact that aU the progress which had been
made in the long centuries we have been consid-
ering was, for the time, a latent force. The evo-
lution idea, with the numerous truths which had
accumulated about it, was again almost wholly
subordinate to the special creation idea.
DARWIN S25
Lijell (1797-1875)
Charles Lyell, the great geologist, who influ-
enced the mind of Darwin far more than any of
his other predecessors, believed in natural cau-
sation as part of his doctrine of uniformity. He
had been teaching that "as often as certain forms
of animals and plants disappeared, for reasons
quite unintelligible to us, others took their place
by virtue of a causation, which was quite beyond
our comprehension." He had carefully studied,
and rejected, the Lamarckian explanation. The
first edition of his Principles of Geology is of
historic interest and importance, because a copy
of it was taken by young Darwin on the Beagle,
Citations such as the following^ most clearly
express LyelFs attitude toward the evolution
idea of Lamarck, or as much of Lyell's real opin-
ion as he was wilhng to put into print, because
there can be little doubt that he was at heart an
evolutionist :
The name of species, observes Lamarck, has been
usually applied to "every collection of similar indi-
viduals, produced by other individuals like them-
selves." . . .
In order to shake this opinion, Lamarck enters
upon the following line of argument. The more we
iCharles Lyell: Principles of Geology, 1832, vol. II, pp. 3, 7,
18, 27.
326 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
advance in the knowledge of the different organized
bodies which cover the surface of the globe, the more
our embarrassment increases, to determine what
ought to be regarded as a species, and still more how
to limit and distinguish genera. . . .
Although important changes in the nature of the
places which they inhabit modify the organization
of animals as well as vegetables, yet the former, says
Lamarck, require more time to complete a consider-
able degree of transmutation, and, consequently, we
are less sensible of such occurrences. Next to a di-
versity of the medium in which animals or plants may
live, the circumstances which have most influence in
modifying their organs are differences in exposure,
climate, the nature of the soil, and other local par-
ticulars. These circumstances are as varied as are
the characters of species, and, like them, pass by
insensible shades into each other, there being every
intermediate gradation between the opposite ex-
tremes. . . .
The theory of the transmutation of species . . .
has met with some degree of favour from many natu-
ralists, from their desire to dispense, as far as pos-
sible, with the repeated intervention of a First Cause,
as often as geological monuments attest the succes-
sive appearance of new races of animals and plants,
and the extinction of those pre-existing. . . .
If we look for some of those essential changes
which would be required to lend even the semblance
of a foundation for the theory of Lamarck, respect-
ing the growi:h of new organs and the gradual oblit-
eration of others, we find nothing of the kind. . . .
DARWIN 327
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
It is impossible in the brief limits of these
outlines^ to give Darwin his true relief, that is, in
proportion to his actual work and influence as
compared with his predecessors, and it is diffi-
cult to say anything about him which has not
been as well or better said before. We can, how-
ever, ask two questions which connect him with
this history and which can be brought into a
stronger hght than has been done hitherto. First,
how much did Darwin owe to the evolutionists
who went before him? Second, what was the
course of his own changing opinion upon the
causes of Evolution?
As to the first, he owed far more to the past
than is generally believed, or than he himself was
conscious of, especially to the full and true con-
ception of the evolution idea which had already
been reached, to the nature of its evidences, and,
to some extent, to the nature of its causes. Al-
though anticipated by others, Darwin conceived,
and worked out, the theory of natural selection.
What he owed to no one came from his genius
as an observer and from his wonderful applica-
tion of the inductive method of search after nat-
ural laws. Like Lamarck alone, among all his
iSee also Impressions of Great Naturalists, vol. II of Biolog-
ical Series.
328 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
predecessors, Darwin was early fired with the
truth of the idea and was equally ready to suffer
social and scientific ostracism in its pursuit.
Second, I may endeavor to trace the influences
which moulded Darwin's earlier and later opin-
ions ; how, starting with some leaning toward the
theories of modification of Buff on and Lamarck,
he reached an almost exclusive belief in the pow-
ers of his own principle of 'natural selection,'
and then gradually reverted to Buffon's views
of the direct action of the environment and to
Lamarck's theory of the transmitted effect of
habit as well, until in his maturest writings he
embraced a threefold causation in the origin
of species: namely, as first and most important,
the Darwin- Wallace factor of natural selection;
second, as of considerable importance, the E.
Darwin-Lamarck factor of the inheritance of the
effects of use and disuse; third, as still of some
importance, the Buffon factor of the direct ac-
tion of the environment. Yet he independently
reached each of these factors, chiefly through his
own observations and partly through contempo-
rary observers, rather than through the argu-
ments advanced by their authors. All this con-
nects Darwin with the past, not by way of di-
minishing his lustre, but of doing the past justice.
And now a word as to the method of observa-
tion and induction which enabled him, in a single
DARWIN 329
lifetime, to leap along over the progress of cen-
turies. The long retention of his theory from pub-
lication marks the contrast of his caution with
the impetuousness of Lamarck. He sought a hun-
dred facts and observations where his predeces-
sors had sought one ; his notes filled volumes, and
he stands out as the first evolutionist who worked
*upon true Baconian principles.' It was this char-
acteristic which, combined with his originality
and marvelous power of generalization, won the
battle for the evolution idea.
As Canon Kingsley wrote to Maurice: "Dar-
win is conquering everywhere, and rushing in
like a flood by the mere force of truth and fact."
When his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, held
back at the inadequacy of his own theory to ex-
plain the origin of adaptation in color, he dis-
played the rare scientific temper which was
transmitted to the grandson. Krause has pointed
out, what is in fact most obvious, how largely the
thoughts and temperaments of these elder and
younger evolutionists of the same family ran in
parallel lines; they seemed to have inborn ten-
dencies to look at Nature in the same way.
Another cause of Darwin's triumphant success
where all others had failed was his living at a
time when the storehouse of facts was fairly
bursting for want of a generalization; the prog-
ress in every branch of natural history since La-
330 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
marck's time had been prodigious. Again, even
this combination of temperament and circum-
stance might have failed but for Darwin's rare
education direct from Nature upon the voyage
of the Beagle. He had gained little or nothing
from the routine methods of education in school
and university, as we learn in his own words:
"My scientific tastes appear to have been cer-
tainly innate. ... I consider that all I have
learnt of any value has been self-taught. . . .
My innate taste for natural history strongly con-
firmed and directed by the voyage of the
Beagle'' Humboldt's Personal Narrative and
Herschel's Introduction to the Study of Nat-
ural Philosophy aroused his enthusiasm. His nat-
ural taste for geology, chilled by earlier teachers,
was revived during an excursion with Professor
Sedgwick, from whom he learned "that science
consists in grouping facts so that general laws
and conclusions may be drawn from them." This
was in 1831 ; upon his return from the excursion
he entered upon his 'Voyage.'
His training for such an undertaking had been
slight, and when we read what he saw during
these three years, between the age of twenty-two
and twenty-five, we realize the greatness of his
genius. The procession of life in time had al-
ready come passingly before him. He now learnt
for himself the great lesson of uniformity of
past and present causes, that for Nature 'time is
DARWIN 331
nothing.' The rocks, the fossils, the hfe of the
continents and islands passed before his mind
like a panorama of that grand history which had
come singly and in fragments to every evolution-
ist preceding him.
Only a few decades back, Humboldt had taken
a somewhat similar journey in South America
and had written:
This phenomenon [the distribution of plants] is
one of the most curious in the history of organic
forms. I say history, for in vain would reason forbid
man to form hypotheses upon the origin of things;
he still goes on puzzling himself with insoluble prob-
lems relating to the distribution of beings.
The same phenomena came to Darwin's mind
as the greatest and most pressing for solution,
and he returned from this voyage determined to
solve the problem of the origin of species by in-
duction. There were but two theories to choose
from — the special creation theory and the trans-
mutation theory. He took them up with an open
mind.
Now let us see how the full-grown evolution
idea came to him. There is no evidence that he
read any of the literature we have been consid-
ering ; he was from the first an original observer
and naturalist rather than a natural philosopher
or student of causes. At the age of eighteen, while
in the University of Edinburgh, he formed the
332 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
acquaintance of Doctor Grant, who, on one oc-
casion, burst forth into high praise of the doc-
trines of Lamarck. Darwin had even earlier read
the Zoonomia, but without receiving any effect
from it. "Nevertheless," he says, "it is probable
that the hearing, rather early in life, such views
maintained and praised, may have favoured my
upholding them in a different form in my Origin
of Species,'' It is very evident from all Darwin's
criticisms of Lamarck that he never studied him
carefully in the original, so that all he owed at
this time to his grandfather and to Lamarck was
the general idea of the evolution of life. Later,
however, he took with him on the Beagle Lyell's
Principles of Geology,^ in which Lamarck's doc-
trines are admirably set forth and fully discussed,
so that there is little doubt that the problem of
transformation was, after all, most strongly
brought to him by Lamarck indirectly through
Lyell's able treatment.
In 1834, during the voyage, Darwin was still
a special creationist, yet the problem of mutabil-
ity haunted him, as it was brought home by the
strong evidences of change which met him on
every side. He says:^
I had been deeply impressed by discovering in the
Pampean formation great fossil animals covered
iThe first volume appeared in 1830, the second in 1832; Dar-
win's voyage lasted from 1831 to 1836.
^Life and Letters, last edition, authorized ed.. No. 604, 1896,
vol. I, p. 67.
DARWIN 333
with armour like that on the existing armadillos;
secondly, by the manner in which closely allied ani-
mals replaced one another in proceeding southwards
over the Continent ; and thirdly, by the South Ameri-
can character of most of the productions of the Gala-
pagos archipelago, and more especially by the man-
ner in which they differ slightly on each island of the
group, none of the islands appearing to be very an-
cient in a geological sense. It was evident that such
facts as these, as well as many others, could only be
explained on the supposition that species gradually
become modified ; and the subject haunted me. But it
was equally evident that neither the action of the
surrounding conditions,^ nor the will of the organ-
isms^ (especially in the case of plants) could account
for the innumerable cases in which organisms of
every kind are beautifully adapted to their habits
of life — for instance, a woodpecker or a tree frog
to climb trees, or a seed for dispersal by hooks or
plumes. I had always been much struck by such adap-
tations, and until these could be explained it seemed
to me almost useless to endeavour to prove by indirect
evidence that species have been modified.
It was after his return in 1837 that Darwin
opened his first note-book for the collection of
facts which bore in any way on variation in ani-
mals and plants under domestication and in Na-
ture. He says: *'I worked on true Baconian prin-
ciples, and without any theory collected facts on
a wholesale scale, more especially with respect to
iRe here refers to Buffon's factor.
2He here refers to and misconceives Lamarck's factor.
334 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
domesticated products, by printed inquiries, by
conversation with skilful breeders and gardeners,
and by extensive reading." This is the most de-
liberate and rigid instance of the application of
the inductive method which we have met with in
our whole study of the contributors to the evo-
lution theory.
Darwin soon perceived the force of artificial
selection as the secret of man's success in form-
ing useful races of animals and plants; and in
October, 1838, while reading Malthus on popu-
lation, the idea of selection in a state of Nature
first occurred to him as the result of the struggle
for existence, or rather for life, between differ-
ent individuals and species. Four years later he
briefly set down his views, and in 1844 he allowed
himself to write out his progress. He had already
reached the main line of argument of his Origin
of Species, including the now familiar tripod of
his theory — Struggle, Variation, and Selection;
he had also reached his principle of sexual selec-
tion, yet under the influence of the- French evo-
lutionists he "attached somewhat more weight to
the influence of external conditions in producing
variation, and to the inheritance of acquired hab-
its than in the ^Origin.' "^
At this time Darwin naturally began to look
iSee Life and Letters, 1896, vol. I, pp. 375-6. This was Huxley's
observation upon this essay in reply to a request for a criticism
from the editor. This essay should be published.
DARWIN 335
into the literature of the subject and was read-
ing Geoffroy St. Hilaire. He carefully read
and abstracted Haldeman's arguments for and
against the development theory. He studied the
botanist de Candolle upon the effects of geo-
graphical distribution and Brown upon varia-
tion. He was somewhat fearful lest he should be
classed with Lamarck. He wrote to Hooker
(January 11, 1844) :
... I have been now ever since my return en-
gaged in a very presumptuous work, and I know no
one individual who would not say a very foolish one.
I was so struck with the distribution of the Gala-
pagos organisms, etc., and wath the character of the
American fossil mammifers, etc., that I determined
to collect blindly every sort of fact which could bear
in any way on what are species. ... At last, gleams
of light have come, and I am almost convinced (quite
contrary to the opinion that I started with) that
species are not (it is like confessing a murder) im-
mutable. Heaven forfend me from Lamarck nonsense
of a "tendency to progression," "adaptations from
the slow willing of animals," etc. ! But the conclusions
I am led to are not widely different from his ; though
the means of change are wholly so.
In another place he wrote: "Lamarck's work ap-
peared to me to be extremely poor; I got not a
fact or idea from it."
By 1856 Darwin had sent Hooker his manu-
336 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
scripts. He had also, as a matter of greatest in-
terest to us in the development of his views,
swung entirely away from any sympathy with
the theories of Buffon and Lamarck, and had
reached the extreme position as to the powers of
natural selection which he continued to hold for
some years. Several passages show this :^
External conditions (to which naturalists so often
appeal) do by themselves very little. How much they
do, is the point of all others on which I feel myself
very weak. I judge from the facts of variation under
domestication, and I may yet get more light. . . .
The formation of a strong variety or species I look at
as almost wholly due to the selection of what may be
incorrectly called chance variations or variability.
Of the powers of natural selection he wrote
to Lyell in 1859: "Grant a simple Archetypal
creature, like the Mud-fish or Lepidosiren, with
the five senses and some vestige of mind, and
I believe natural selection will account for the
production of every vertebrate animal." But he
was more cautious in publication, for in the first
edition of the Origin of Species, which appeared
in the same year, he said: "I am convinced that
Natural Selection has been the main but not ex-
clusive means of modification."
The contrast between Darwin's selection the-
^Letter to Hooker, Nov. 23, 1856.
DARWIN
337
ory of adaptation and Lamarck's inheritance
theory of adaptation is shown in the following
passages :
The giraffe lives in dry, des-
ert places, without herbage, so
that it is obliged to browse on
the leaves of trees, and is con-
tinually forced to reach up to
them. It results from this habit,
continued for a long time in all
the individuals of its species,
that its fore limbs have become
so elongated that the giraffe,
without raising itself erect on
its hind legs, raises its head
and reaches six metres high
(almost twenty feet). — La-
marck: Philosophie Zoologique,
1809, vol. I, p. 256, See Pack-
ard's Lamarck, His Life and
Worky 1901, p. 351.
So under nature with the
nascent giraffe, the individuals
which were the highest brows-
ers, and were able during
dearths to reach even an inch
or two above the others, will
often have been preserved; for
they will have roamed over the
whole country in search of
food. . . . Slight proportional
differences, due to the laws of
growth and variation, are not
of the slightest use or impor-
tance to most species. But it
will have been otherwise with
the nascent giraffe, considering
its probable habits of life; for
those individuals which had
some one part or several parts
of their bodies rather more
elongated than usual, would
generally have survived. These
will have intercrossed and left
offspring, either inheriting the
same bodily peculiarities, or
with a tendency to vary again
in the same manner; whilst the
individuals, less favoured in the
same respects, will have been
the most liable to perish. — Dar-
win: Origin of Species. Last
edition, authorized edition, No.
604, 1896, vol. I, p. 277.
In the use of the word 'chance,'^ Darwin re-
calls to mind the old passage in Aristotle of the
two alternatives in our views of Nature. Dar-
^His meaning in the use of the word *chance' was not the ordi-
nary one. Loc. cit., p. 164: "I have sometimes spoken," etc.
338 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
win's standpoint was different from either; by
*ehance variations' he refers to those occurring
under unknown laws, not under the 'blind for-
tuity' of Empedocles, nor under the 'progressive
principle' of Aristotle. He found no evidence for
an internal perfecting principle. In connection
with the first edition of the Origin he wrote :^
The so-called improvement of our Short-horn
cattle, pigeons, etc., does not presuppose or require
any aboriginal "power of adaptation," or "principle
of improvement." ... If I have a second edition, I
will reiterate "Natural Selection," and, as a general
consequence, "Natural Improvement."
He mistakenly attributed to Lamarck the view
held by the author of the Vestiges, when he dis-
avowed holding "the Lamarckian or Vestigian
doctrine of 'necessary progression,' that is, of
progression independent of conditions." This is
further shown in his correspondence^ concerning
Nageli;^ "I am, however, far from agreeing with
him that the acquisition of certain characters
which appear to be of no service to plants, offers
iLetter to Lyell, Oct. 25, 1859.
^Life and Letters. Letter to Victor Carus, Nov. 10, 1866.
SNageli, a distinguished German botanist, believed that he
found in his studies of the Evolution of plants proofs of the ex-
istence of an internal perfecting principle in life, by which, inde-
pendently of all outside agencies, the Plant Kingdom is constantly
tending to a higher degree of perfection. These views were pub-
lished in 1865. Somewhat similar views have been advanced by
Baer, Kolliker, and others.
DARWIN 339
any great difficulty, or affords a proof of some
innate tendency in plants toward perfection."
This standpoint is further brought out in Dar-
win's very interesting correspondence with Asa
Gray upon the evidence for design in Nature: "I
cannot think that the world, as we see it, is the re-
sult of chance; and yet I cannot look at each sep-
arate thing as the result of Design. To take a
crucial example, you lead me to infer that you
believe 'that variation has been led along certain
beneficial lines.' I cannot believe this."^ Again:
*'I must think that it is illogical to suppose that
the variations, which natural selection preserves
for the good of any being have been designed."^
In still another passage:^ "I am inclined to look
at everything as resulting from designed laws,
with the details, whether good or bad, left to the
working out of what we may call chance. Not
that this notion at all satisfies me."
This makes sufficiently clear Darwin's opin-
ions at this time upon the theories of all his pred-
ecessors except one, namely, St. Hilaire. Hux-
ley, in his early correspondence upon the Origin
of Species, tried to convince Darwin of the pos-
sibility of occasional rapid leaps or changes in
Nature, analogous to those which St. Hilaire
had advocated, although Huxley probably did
'^Life and Letters. Letter to Asa Gray, Nov. 26, 1860.
2Loc. cit. Letter to Asa Gray, Sept. 17, 1861 (?).
^Loc. cit. Letter to Asa Gray, May 22, 1860.
340 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
not have this author in mind nor contemplate any-
great extremes of transformation. Darwin held
to his original proposition, handed down from
Leibnitz, 'Natura non facit saltum,' concluding:
"It would take a great deal more evidence to
make me admit that forms have often changed
by saltum''^
The idea of natural selection came to Darwin
in the year 1838 through the suggestion of Mal-
thus,^ who, in turn, had probably borrowed it
from Buff on. He was at the time unaware of any
of the distinct anticipations of his theory. His
attention was called to Naudin's paper in 1859;
to Matthew's article in 1860; to that of Wells in
1865. Some one, also, called his attention to Aris-
totle and Empedocles. It is possible that his eye
may have caught the passage in St. Hilaire sug-
gesting the idea, without his conscious recollec-
tion of it. The strong passage in Erasmus Dar-
win's poem may also have survived in his mem-
ory. Yet as far as Darwin knew, the idea of the
'struggle for life' came first from Malthus; it
grew upon him in reading de Candolle, W. Her-
bert, and Lyell, of whom he said, "Even they
have not written strongly enough." The force of
this 'struggle' gradually intensified itself in his
mind to a point where he believed it was such that
"^Life and Letters. Letter to Hooker, February, 1860.
2See Impressions of Great Naturalists, 1928, pp. 77-9.
DARWIN 341
not merely the entire adaptive form of the ani-
mal, but even a slight adaptive variation in a
single character, would turn the scale in favor of
survival! This was during the period of his ex-
treme faith in the natural selection factor, which
reached its highest point about 1858. He grad-
ually^ receded from this extreme, as shown in a
letter to Victor Cams in 1869: *'I have been led
... to infer that single variations are of even
less importance, in comparison with individual
differences, than I formerly thought." He here
refers to the aggregate of distinction between
two forms.
This reaction was accompanied by a slow
change of mind toward the Lamarckian factor
of the inheritance of the effects of use and disuse.
This was brought about, apparently, not through
a renewed study of the Philosophie Zoologique,
but by Darwin's own observations upon the do-
mesticated animals, especially in his records of
structures which were developing and degenerat-
ing entirely apart from the main course of the
artificial selection of breeders, as well as from the
weight of utility or usefulness in the scale of sur-
vival in Nature. He may have been influenced
also by the thorough Lamarckism of Herbert
Spencer, although this does not appear in the
Life and Letters.
Darwin's gradual recession from his exclusion
342 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
of the Buffon-St. Hilaire factor also evidently
began in course of the preparation of his great
work upon 'variation.' He was influenced by his
own wider range of observation, and, later, by
the observations of Wagner, of Allen, and oth-
ers. As early as 1862 he wrote to Hooker:^
I hardly know why I am a little sorry, but my
present work is leading me to believe rather more in
the direct action of physical conditions. I presume
I regret it, because it lessens the glory of natural
selection, and is so confoundedly doubtful. Perhaps
I shall change again when I get all my facts under
one point of view, and a pretty hard job this will be.
Fourteen years later Darwin had positively in-
cluded Buffon's factor of the direct action of en-
vironment among the causes of Evolution.^ In
1876 he wrote to Moriz Wagner:^
When I wrote the 'Origin,' and for some years
afterward, I could find little good evidence of the
direct action of the environment ; now there is a large
^Life and Letters. Letter, Nov. 24, 1862.
20ne of the author's correspondents [C. H. Ward] believes
that Darwin's change of mind toward the Buffonian and La-
marckian factors is overstated in the present volume. As to Buf-
fon, Darwin wrote to Semper Nov. 26, 1878:
"When I published the sixth edition of the Origin ... I went
as far as I could, perhaps too far in agreement with Wagner;
since that time I have seen no reason to change my mind."
In regard to the Lamarckian factor, Darwin's mind never
changed so far as to lessen the supreme importance he attached to
natural selection.
^Life and Letters. Letter to Wagner, Oct. 13, 1876.
DARWIN S43
body of evidence, and your case of the Saturnia is
one of the most remarkable of which I have heard.
In 1878 he fully included Wagner's theory as
one cause of origin of species, through the direct
action of environment in the same country or
through geographical isolation/ In 1877 also he
had written to Morse r "I quite agree about the
high value of Mr. Allen's works, as showing
how much change may be expected apparently
through the direct action of the conditions of
life." There is thus no doubt that the idea of nat-
ural selection, as almost the sole factor, came to
a climax in Darwin's mind and then gradually
appeared less supremely important and exclu-
sive. In preparing his work on Variation,' the
importance of the problem of heredity came be-
fore him, and in writing to Huxley, in 1865,^ he
gives a *brief ' of his point of view at the time, in
concisely stating what a working theory of hered-
ity should embrace:
The case stands thus : in my next book I shall pub-
lish long chapters on bud- and seminal-variation, on
inheritance, reversion, effects of use and disuse, etc.
I have also for many years speculated on the different
forms of reproduction. Hence it has come to be a
passion with me to try to connect all such facts by
some sort of hypothesis.
'^Life and Letters. Letter to Semper, November 30, 1878.
^Loc. cit. Letter to Morse, April 23, 1877.
^Loc. cit. Letter to Huxley, May 27, 1865 (?).
344 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
Here, again, Darwin reached independently
an hypothesis of heredity known as 'pangenesis'
which had been already formulated by Buffon,
Maupertuis, and foreshadowed by Democritus
and Hippocrates. Concerning Buffon's unex-
pected anticipation, he wrote to Huxley (1865?) ,
to whom he had submitted his manuscript :
I have read Buffon : whole pages are laughably like
mine. It is surprising how candid it makes one to see
one's views in another man's words. . . . Neverthe-
less, there is a fundamental distinction between Buf-
fon's views and mine. He does not suppose that each
cell or atom of tissue throws off a little bud.
Among Darwin's last words upon the factors
of Evolution are those in the sixth edition of the
Origin of Species} In the modification of spe-
cies he refers as causes, successively to his own,
to Lamarck's, and to Buffon's factor in the fol-
lowing clear language:
This has been effected chiefly through the natural
selection of numerous, successive, slight, favourable
variations ; aided in an important manner by the in-
herited effects of the use and disuse of parts; and
in an unimportant manner — that is, in relation to
adaptive structures, whether past or present — by the
direct action of external conditions, and by variations
which seem to us in our ignorance to arise spon-
taneously.
11880, p. 424.
DARWIN 345
Later, in the Descent of Man^ he speaks of the
effects of use as probably becoming hereditary,
showing that he still did not consider the evi-
dence so convincing as that relating to disuse.
"The chief agents in causing organs to become
rudimentary seem to have been disuse, at that
period of life when the organ is chiefly used (and
this is generally during maturity), and also in-
heritance at a corresponding period of life." It
should be repeated that these decided changes of
opinion were, in part, a tacit acceptance of work
done elsewhere, especially in Germany, rather
than the direct outcome of Darwin's own obser-
vations. In part they certainly reflected his own
observations and maturer judgment.
Darwin and Wallace
Finally, we record the most striking^ of all the
many coincidences and independent discoveries
in the history of the evolution idea. Darwin's
long withholding of his theory from publication
between 1837 and 1858 came near costing him
his eminent claims to priority, for in the latter
year Alfred Russel Wallace had also reached a
similar theory. By the happy further coincidence
of a friendship which always remained of the
11881, p. 32.
^For details see Osborn: Impressions of Great Naturalists (vol.
II of this series), 1928, pp. 40-1, 77-9.
346 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
most generous order Wallace sent his freshly-
completed manuscript to Darwin. But for his
friends Hooker and Lyell, Darwin would even
then have held back his work; by their coopera-
tion, two modest papers appeared in the Journal
of the Linncean Society ^^ which had been read to
the Linnsean Society July 1, 1858. The first con-
sisted of Darwin's letter of 1857 to Asa Gray and
extracts from a manuscript^ sketched by Dar-
win in 1839 and copied in 1844, from the second
part, entitled "On the Variation of Organic Be-
ings in a State of Nature ; on the Natural Means
of Selection; on the Comparison of Domestic
Races and True Species." The second consisted
of the paper by Wallace, written in February,
1858, entitled "On the Tendency of Varieties to
depart indefinitely from the Original Type."
The line of thought in these two papers is closely
but not precisely parallel, as shown in these col-
umns:
Darwin Waixace
There is in Nature a struggle The life of wild animals is a
for existence, as shown by Mai- struggle for existence ... in
thus and De Candolle. which the weakest and least
perfect must always succumb.
Rapid multiplication, if un- Even the least prolific of ani-
checked, even of slow-breeding mals would increase rapidly if
animals like the elephant . . . unchecked.
Great changes in the envi- A change in the environment
ronment occur. may occur.
iVol. Ill, no. 9, August 20, 1858, pp. 45-62.
^This MS. "was never intended for publication, and therefore
was not written with care."
DARWIN 347
Darwin Wallace
It has been shown in a for- (No cause of variation as-
mer part of this work that such signed.)
changes of external conditions Varieties do frequently oc-
would, from their acting upon cur spontaneously,
the reproductive system, prob-
ably cause the organisation All variations from the typi-
... to become plastic. cal form have some definite
Can it be doubted that . . . effect, however slight, on the
any minute variation in struc- habits or capacities of the in-
ture, habits, or instincts, adapt- dividuals. Abundance or rarity
ing that individual better to the of a species is dependent on its
new conditions, would tell upon more or less perfect adapta-
its vigor and health? tion. If any species should pro-
In the struggle it would have duce a variety having slightly
a better chance of surviving; increased powers of preserving
and those of the offspring who existence, that variety must in-
inherited the variation, be it evitably in time acquire a su-
ever so slight, would also have periority in numbers,
a better chance.
Remarkable as this parallelism is, it is not com-
plete. The line of argument is the same, but the
point d'appui is different ; that is, Darwin had in
mind variations. Wallace had in mind varieties,
and there is a great biological difference between
the two concepts. Darwin dwells upon vari-
ations in single characters, as taken hold of
by selection; Wallace mentions variations, but
dwells upon full-formed varieties, as favorably
or unfavorably adapted. It is perfectly clear that
with Darwin the struggle is so intense that the
chance of survival of each individual turns upon
a single and even slight variation. With Wal-
lace, varieties are already presupposed by causes
which he does not discuss, a change in the envi-
ronment occurs, and those varieties which hap-
348 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
pen to be adapted to it survive. There is really a
wide gap between these two statements and ap-
plications of the theory.
A further striking feature in this parallelism
of thought is that Wallace, like Darwin, first
caught the suggestion of the struggle for ex-
istence from reading Malthus.
Unlike Darwin, Wallace conserved his earlier
views entire; he remained a rigid natural selec-
tionist, and incorporated the extreme views of
Darwin upon the importance of variations in sin-
gle characters. As one of the leaders of thought
in contemporary Evolution, Wallace belongs
chiefly to the after-Darwin period.
This closes the main history of the evolution
idea, from the earliest period of Greek thought
to the full pronouncement of the idea in the
Origin of Species in 1859. In another volume.
Impressions of Great Naturalists, the Darwin
story is told more fully.
RETROSPECT
After my prolonged restudy of the entire
twenty-four-century period of evolution thought
I am more than ever impressed with the evidence
of continuity in the development of the great
central idea of Evolution as first expressed in my
early course of lectures at Princeton in the year
1890. The main difference between the modern
idea of Evolution and the Greek idea is not due
to any essential difference between the Greek
mind and the modern mind, except in favor of
the former; it is due to the incalculable growth of
our knowledge, which, whether we will or not,
forces the principle of Evolution upon us as the
most comprehensive law of Nature that has been
discovered.
When we compare Aristotle's Historia Ani-
malium of the fourth century b. c. with the stu-
pendous volumes of research of the present day,
which set forth in minutest detail the principles
of anatomy, physiology and biology — branches
to which Aristotle devoted merely a few lines or
sentences of exposition — we realize the wide con-
trast and wonder the more that the Greeks, with
their comparatively meagre and limited knowl-
edge, came so near the truth.
349
350 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
Now that we are in a position to bring together
all the evidences of the continuity of evolution
thought, our difficulty lies in choosing the via
media between an overestimate and an underesti-
mate of the anticipation by the Greeks of modern
thought. First, we must not put the wine of mod-
ern discovery into the old bottles of the Greek
concepts. As we ascend from the 'formless
masses' of the thought of Empedocles to the full
concept of Evolution by Lamarck and into its
fuller expression by Charles Darwin, we must
ourselves look forward to the future time when
new and more intensive knowledge may render
the conceptions of Lamarck and Darwin as
youthful and immature as those of Empedocles
and Aristotle appear to us today.
The idea of Evolution in the sense of progress
or advance of less perfect to more perfect living
organisms may have been rooted in the cosmic
'movement' of Heraclitus but it seems more
probable that it arose from the direct observation
and comparison of living organisms, including
man, since all the illustrations of the rudimen-
tary concept advanced by such authors as Em-
pedocles, Thales, Anaximander, and their fol-
lowers are drawn from life; they are, as far as
they go, scientific rather than philosophical or
metaphysical. They reveal the curious and in-
quiring scientific mind that is always seeking a
RETROSPECT 351
natural rather than supernatural or metaphysical
explanation. In other words, Greek interpreta-
tions of the initial i)assage from the inorganic to
the organic world, of the origin of life, of com-
petition and the struggle for existence, of the
origin of adaptations, are from the beginning
naturalistic, although eventually they become
philosophical and constitute an important part
of the Greek philosophy of Nature.
Nevertheless, the philosophical environment
of the evolution idea is seen gradually shaping
itself in a better understanding of the relations
of Design and of Causation, while the natural-
istic environment is seen expanding step by step
with the biological sciences. Two of Aristotle's
philosophical principles, lying midway between
physics and metaphysics, have exerted a pro-
found and very misleading influence even down
to the present day. I refer first to his 'perfecting
tendency,' which led Leibnitz and all his natural-
istic and speculative followers away from the
search for a natural cause of Adaptation; why
seek for a natural cause of Adaptation through
experiment and observation when we philosophi-
cally assume such a cause in an 'internal perfect-
ing tendency'? The second philosophical prin-
ciple of Aristotle, embodied in his idea of 'unity
of type,' also exerted a deterrent influence on
observation and, as finally developed in the mind
352 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
of Geoffrey St. Hilaire, of the philosophical
anatomists, and of Richard Owen, was advanced
as a compromise between Evolution and the
much more recent doctrine of Special Creation.
Nowhere among the Greek philosophers and
biologists is the idea of Special Creation of ani-
mal and plant forms by a great designing First
Cause even suggested; the relatively late devel-
opment of such a concept is attributable to west-
ern theological thought only.
Abiogenesis, or the direct transition from the
inorganic to the organic, is seen to have had a
host of friends, nearly to the present time, in-
cluding, besides all the Greeks, Lucretius, Au-
gustine, de Maillet, Buffon, Erasmus Darwin,
Lamarck, Treviranus, Oken and Chambers. The
difficulty of origin has been avoided by the as-
sumption of primordial minute masses, which we
have seen developed from the *sof t germ' of Aris-
totle to the Vesicles' and 'filaments' of Buffon,
Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, Oken, and finally
into our primordial protoplasm. Again, the rudi-
ments of the monistic idea of the psychic prop-
erties of all matter, foreshadowed by Empedo-
cles, are seen revived by de Maupertuis and
Diderot. Then we have seen the difficulty of ori-
gin removed one step back by the *pre-existent
germs' of Anaxagoras, revived by de Maillet,
Robinet, Diderot and Bonnet.
RETROSPECT 353
To the inquiry as to where hfe first appeared
we find the answer "in the sea" given by Thales,
Anaximander and de Maillet; "between sea and
land" is the answer of Anaximenes, Diogenes,
Democritus and Oken; "from the earth" is the
soHtary reply of Lucretius. Man's origin and de-
scent were always of the first interest to the
Greeks. The idea of his slow development is sug-
gested by the crude observation of Anaximander
and takes its more scientific form in Lucretius,
Bruno and Leibnitz.
For the succession of life we have followed the
ascending scale of Aristotle, Bruno, Leibnitz and
others, until Buffon realized its inadequacy and
Lamarck substituted the simile of the branching
tree. Of man as the summit of the scale and still
in process of becoming more perfect in his en-
dowments, we learn from Empedocles, Aristotle,
Robinet, Diderot, Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck
and Treviranus.
The struggle for existence we have traced to
Anaximander and, more clearly in its bearing
upon feeding and propagation, to Empedocles
and Lucretius. Buffon and Malthus greatly de-
veloped it afresh, while Erasmus Darwin, Tre-
viranus, de Candolle and others gave it its mod-
ern form.
Of the greatest moment of all is our pursuit of
the eternal problem of Adaptation, first as it
354 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
presented itself to Empedocles, Democritus and
Anaxagoras, and second, as it became connected
with Causation in the minds of Aristotle, Buff on,
Kant, Erasmus Darwin, Goethe and Charles
Darwin. Around the solution of this problem we
have seen center the development and clarifica-
tion of four conceptions: environment, struggle
for existence, variation, survival of the fittest.
We have seen first how ideas of Adaptation in
immutable types were recast into the grander
Adaptation in mutable types under changing en-
vironment, and how the full modern conception
of Adaptation arose slowly through philosophi-
cal anatomy and embryology as pursued by Buf-
fon, Kant, Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, Goethe,
Treviranus, Geoffroy and Serres. The signifi-
cance of degeneration and of vestigial structures
meanwhile grew clear in the interpretations of
Sylvius, Buffon, Kant, Goethe and Lamarck.
Adaptation as arising from trial and error,
that is through fortuitous combinations and acci-
dental variations in relation to the survival of
the fittest, is found to be one of the most ancient
scientific ideas of which we have record in his-
tory. It is seen to follow two lines. The first is
the survival of the fittest forms or types of life
as conceived by Empedocles, considered either
as a whole, or as a collection of similar individ-
uals, or as a 'variety,' in modern terms. This we
RETROSPECT 355
have seen originate with Empedocles and receive
the support of Epicurus and Lucretius, and
much more recently of Hume, Diderot and
others. In its relation to modern evolution, we see
it brought out afresh by Buffon, Malthus, Kant,
Wells, Matthew and Wallace.
The second line — that of fortuitous fitness in
certain organs as expressed by Aristotle — is that
perfected by Charles Darwin, namely, the sur-
vival of types favored by the possession of some
fortuitously adaptive combination of parts or of
some favorable variation in a single organ. This
conception we also trace from Diderot through
Aristotle back to Empedocles; but it is appar-
ently a spontaneous and independent discovery
as we find it in Buffon and Helvetius, who trans-
mit it to Erasmus Darwin. Finally, it is again
rediscovered, or grandly evolved by induction
and observation, by Charles Darwin, who raises
it to its present magnitude as the central prin-
ciple of Selection in the living world.
The Lamarckian concept of the origin of
Adaptation through the hereditary transmission
of acquired adaptations also arose among the
Greeks, in the form of a definite doctrine, as
shown in its discussion by Aristotle and by Plato.
Doubtless it was thus handed down to de Maillet,
Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, who first gave it its
full expression, Lamarck, who made it the foun-
356 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
dation stone of his entire theory of Adaptation,
and Laplace, who supported Lamarck in his con-
ception. Herbert Spencer, too, erected the trans-
mission of individual adaptations into a really
central position in his philosophy. With this is
associated closely the concept of adaptation to
new conditions arising from the wants and needs
of animals, first expressed by Aristotle (p. 78)
and erected by Cope into the theory of Archges-
thetism.
Whereas the early Greeks conceived of the
sudden abiogenetic origin of man, the idea of
human ascent with modification gradually fol-
lowed. In Aristotle's Physics the adaptations of
the human teeth are discussed as if they had a
natural and gradual rather than sudden origin.
Since the interest of the Greeks centered around
man, Greek research was early directed to the
comparison of adaptations in man and the lower
animals. Aristotle discussed the resemblances
and differences between man and the apes of the
Mediterranean region as they were known in his
period. Partly due to the influence of Greek
speculation is the recognition of man's relation
to other primates, as developed by Bruno, Leib-
nitz, Buifon, Kant, Herder. Bruno perceives the
importance of the tool-bearing hands, and most
interesting is the suggestion by Buffon, Helve-
tius and Erasmus Darwin that the exceptional
RETROSPECT 357
powers of opposition of the thumb, rendering its
bearers fittest to survive, may have originated as
a happy accident.
Environment as a transforming factor was ap-
parently observed late, for we have seen it first
develop in the writings of Bacon, de Maillet,
Buffon, Kant, Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, Tre-
viranus, Geoffroy, St. Vincent, von Buch and
others. Variation is of seventeenth century ori-
gin, at least when considered partly as evidence
of, partly as a factor in. Evolution ; we have seen
it treated by Bacon, Leibnitz, Maupertuis, La-
marck and Geoffroy, terminating with its full
exposition in the first half of the century as a
link of Darwinism.
It is impossible to condense into a few sen-
tences like the above all of the ancestral and suc-
cessive stages in the innumerable ideas which
clustered around the concept of Evolution. The
reader will be greatly aided by the Index, both
of pre-Darwinian authors and subjects, which
has been most carefully prepared. The Hst of
authors alone is as interesting as it is formida-
ble, including as it does the names of Abubacer,
^schylus, Agassiz, Albertus INIagnus, Aldro-
vandi, Anaxagoras, Anaximander, Anaximenes,
Aristotle, Augustine, Avempace, Avicenna, the
two Bacons, Blumenbach, Bonnet, Bruno, Buf-
358 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
fon, Chambers, Colonna, Comte, Cope, Cuvier,
Darwin (Erasmus and Charles), D'Archiac,
D'Azyr, da Vinci, de Blainville, de Candolle, de
Maillet, de Maupertuis, Democritus, Deperet,
Descartes, Diderot, Diogenes, Dioscoridus, Du-
jardin, Dumeril, Duret, Empedocles, Epicurus,
Erigena, Fracastoro, Galen, St. Hilaire (Geof-
froy, Isidore), Goethe, Gregory, Haldeman,
Helvetius, Heraclitus, Heraphilus, Herbert,
Herder, Hippocrates, Hofmeister, Humboldt,
Hume, Kant, Keyserling, Kielmeyer, Kircher,
Lamarck, Laplace, Lavater, Leeuwenhoek,
Leibnitz, Leidy, Lessing, Linngeus, Loder, Lu-
cretius, Lyell, Malthus, Matthew, Meckel, Mi-
vart, McCloud, Nageli, Naudin, Newton, Oken,
Owen, Philo, Plato, Pliny, Polybus, Preaxago-
ras, Pyrrho, Quatrefages, Rafinesque, Reamur,
Robinet, Roscellinus, St. Vincent, Schaaff-
hausen, Schleiden, Schwann, Serres, Socrates,
Sophocles, Spencer, Sperling, Spinoza, Steno,
Strato, Suarez, Swammerdam, Sylvius, Thales,
Theophrastus, Treviranus, Unger, Vesalius, Vol-
taire, von Baer, von Buch, Wallace, Wells, Wil-
liam of Occam, Wolff, Wotton, Xenophanes.
Each of the above hundred and twenty-five
writers took some part in either the advancement
or the retardation of the evolution idea. Through-
out the Middle Ages and up to the times of
Francis Bacon and da Vinci, natural philoso-
RETROSPECT 359
phers were largely mere copyists of Greek con-
cepts and discoveries, but with Bacon himself
and from his time onward there began to be orig-
inal and valuable additions to the evolution con-
cept. The subjects along which the great idea
advanced may also be followed alphabetically as
set forth in the Index as part of the current terms
of modern biology; these include abiogenesis,
adaptation, affiliation, analogy, anatomy in all
its branches, archasthetism, archetype, ascent
and descent of life and man, atavism, atomism,
balance, biogenesis, biogenetic law, biology, bot-
any in several branches, branching evolution,
catastrophism, causation, cell doctrine, chance,
classification, climate, coloration, compensation,
cosmic evolution, creation in all its manifesta-
tions, deduction, degeneration, degradation, de-
sign, development, divergence, dualism, economy
of growth, emhrancliement, embryology ( several
theories), entelechy, epigenesis, evolution in all
its aspects, experimentalism, extinction, fecun-
dity, filament, fihation, finality, fixity, form {vs,
matter), fortuity, force, function, generation,
genesis, geographic distribution and isolation,
germ theory, gradation, habit, heredity, homol-
ogy, human hand, induction, inheritance, inter-
maxillary bone, irritability, kinetogenesis, La-
marckism, materialism, mechanism, metempsy-
chosis, migration, milieu, mind, modification,
360 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
monism, movement, mutability, mutation, muti-
lation, naturalism, nature, nomenclature, ontog-
eny, order in nature, organs, origin of life, origin
of man, origin of species, palaeontology, pangene-
sis, parthenogenesis, perfecting principle, phy-
logeny, plasticity, predetermination, prepotency
of characters, progression, reasoning, recapitula-
tion, respiration, reversion, saltation, scale of
life, selection (artificial, natural, sexual), sensi-
bility, special creation, species, speculation, spon-
taneous generation, structure, struggle for ex-
istence, successive creations, survival of fittest,
teleology, teratology, theologj^ transformation,
transformism, transmission of acquired charac-
ters, transmutation, type, uniformitarianism,
unity of plan, use and disuse, variability, varia-
tion, variety, wants of animals.
As pointed out in the concluding chapter on
Charles Darwin, and as more fully explained in
the succeeding volume of this series {Impressions
of Great Naturalists), these anticipations of
Evolution were largely unknown to Darwin and
had relatively little influence on his mind ; it was
from his own observation and original powers of
generalization that the great principle of animal
and plant evolution was finally given to the
world with convincing and irresistible evidence.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
GENERAL WORKS ON THE HISTORY
OF THE EVOLUTION IDEA
In order to bring out the chronologic significance of the pub-
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In order to save repetition each work has been entered only once,
under the first citation. Further references may be checked
back to the first entry.
CHAPTER I
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363
364 BIBLIOGRAPHY
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CHAPTER II
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CHAPTER m
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CHAPTER IV
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CHAPTER V
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Modern Science, Cambridge, 1909.
Treviranus, Gottfried Reinhold:
BlOLOGIE, ODER PhILOSOPHIE DER LEBENDEN NaTUR. 6 Vols.,
Gottingen, 1802-1822.
Erscheinungen und Gesetze des organischen Lebens.
% vols., Bremen, 1831-1832.
Beitrage zur Aufklarung des organischen Lebens.
Bremen, 1835.
CHAPTER VI
Allen, Grant: English Worthies; Charles Darwin. New
York, 1885.
Baldwin, Mark: Darwin and the Humanities. Baltimore,
1909.
Buch, Leopold von: Physicalische Beschreibung der ca-
NARiscHEN Inseln. Berlin, 1825.
Chevreul: Considerations Generales sur les Variations
DES Individus. Mem, soc. r. et centr. d'agri, p. 287, 1846.
Cox, Charles F. : Charles Darwin and the Mutation Theory.
Amer. Nat, vol. 43, pp. 65-91, 1909.
Darwin, Charles: See Alfred Russel Wallace, 1858.
The Origin of Species. London, 1859. 6th Edition, Lon-
don, 1880.
The Descent of Man. London, 1871.
Life and Letters. 3 vols., London, 1888.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 373
Life and Letters. 2 vols., D. Applcton and Company,
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Darwin-Wallace Celebration Held on Thursday, July 1,
1908, BY the Linnean Society of London. 8vo. Printed
for the Linnean Soeiety, 139 pp., 10 piates, 1908.
d'Halloy, J. J. d'Omalius: Note sur la Succession des Etres
Vivants. Bull. acad. r. de Belgiquey tome 13, part 1, pp. 581-
591, 1846.
Dujardin, Felix: Memoire sur le Developpement des Mfe-
DUSES ET des Polypes Hydraires. Ann. sci. nai.y ser. 3, vol.
4, pp. 257-281, 1845.
Gadow, Hans: Darwinism 100 Years Ago. Nature, vol. 92, p.
320, 1913.
Gordon: De l'Espece et des Races. Mem. soc. sci. Nancy,
p. 182, 1847.
Grant, Robert E.: On the Structure and Natu-re of the
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Gray, Asa: Darwiniana; Essays and Reviews Pertaining
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374 BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Meldola, R.: Evolution Darwinian and Spencerian. Ox-
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Richard Owen and the Evolution Movement. The
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Wigand, A.: Der Darwinismus und die Naturforschung
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INDEX
INDEX
Abiogenesis, 17, 18, 20, 30, 36,
177, 352; Abubaccr, 117; Al-
bertus Magnus, 106; Anax-
agoras, 94; Anaximander, 48;
Anaximenes, 50; Aristotle, 76;
Augustine, 106, 109; Cham-
bers, 313, 316; Democritus. 94;
E. Darwin, 203, 204; Einpedo-
cles, 52, 56; Epicurus, 91;
Erigena, 106; Greek doctrine,
32, 37; influence on evolution
idea, 31 ; lonians, 51 ; La-
marck, 233-4, 252-3; Lucre-
tius, 91^5; Matthew, 322;
Oken, 252; Parmenides, 94;
physicists, 51 ; Roscellinus,
106; St. Vincent, 292; specu-
lative evolutionists, 161; the-
ory abandoned, 38; Trevira-
nus, 289-90; William of Oc-
cam, 106.
Abubacer, 15, 115; abiogenesis
('Nature-man'), 117-8.
Adaptation, 34, 44, 351; Anax-
agoras, 59, 60; Aristotle, 10,
34, 61, 71, 74; Buffon, 147;
Democritus, 34, 59; E. Dar-
win, 203 ; Empedocles, 56, 59 ;
Greek studies, 65, 68, 101,
353-6; Lamarck, 314; princi-
ple, 17; recapitulation, 49.
See Archa^sthetism, Bioge-
netic Law, Darwinism, La-
marckism. Transmission of
Acquired Characters.
^schylus, 63-4; poet of evolu-
tion, 63, 93; volume, 63, 71,
97.
Affiliation between Organisms,
17; Lamarck, 249.
Agassiz, 13; disciple of Cuvier,
281, 282; fixity, 281; oppo-
nent of transformism, 283;
progressionist, 312; recapitu-
lation of adaptations, 49.
Agrigentum, 52, 55; school of
medicine, 67.
Albertus Magnus, 130; abio-
genesis, 106; support of Aris-
totle, 118.
Aldrovandi, systematist, 185.
Allen, 342; influence on Dar-
win, 343.
Analogy in Structure, 71 ; Aris-
totle, 78.
Anatomy, Democritus, 57, 58;
first written work, 67; Greek
studies, 45, 62, 65, 67, 349;
history, 33; philosophers, 258,
295; practitioners, 67, 97;
schools, 131 ; transcendental-
ists (Geoffroy, Oken, Owen),
316. See Man (kinship).
Anaxagoras, 15, 43, 51, 59-62,
63, 64, 71, 76, 161; abiogene-
sis, 94; adaptations, 59, 60,
353 ; causation, 60 ; design, 44,
59, 60; dualism, 60; germ doc-
trine, 171, 352; human hand,
61; mind vs. matter, 61, 62;
origin of life, 60, 62, 99.
Anaximander, 10, 15, 43, 45,
46-9, 50, 64, 160, 181, 350; abi-
ogenesis, 48; movement, 100;
origin of life, 47, 48, 99, 353,
of man, 48; survival, 48; theo-
ries, 46; transformation, 49.
Anaximenes, 15, 43, 49-50; abio-
genesis, 50; causation, 49-50;
origin of life, 50, 353.
Anthropology, Greek studies,
62.
Antiquity, reverence for, 25.
379
380
INDEX
Aquinas, 114, 129, 130; exposi-
tion of Augustine, 113; Greek
science, 107; support of Aris-
totle, 118.
Arabic Science and Philosophy,
12, 122, 114-18; Avicenna,
115; Greek graft, 97; history
of movement, 107, 115; in
Spain, 107-8; opposition to
Bible chronology, 126.
Archaesthetism, Aristotle, 78 ;
Cope, 212, 238, 356; E. Dar-
win, 212; Lamarck, 238. See
Wants of Animals.
Archetypal Skull Theory
(Goethe, Oken, Owen), 316.
Aristotelianism, Arabian phase,
107; Bruno, 124-6; influence
in natural science, 16, in the-
ology, 107; Spanish period,
115.
Aristotle, 15, 25, 36, 41, 43, 61,
68-88, 97, 105, 106, 112, 122,
124, 162, 185, 203, 228, 246,
265, 274, 275, 337, 340; abio-
genesis, 37, 76; adaptation,
34, 61, 354; anticipation of
modern theories, 71-3, 75;
Arabian indebtedness, 115,
116; atavism, 36; church i»-
terdict, 118; design, 79, 87;
development theory, 34, 35,
94 ; dualism, 88 ; economy of
growth, 34; epigenesis, 35, 42;
evolution, 90 ; experimental
method, 77; form, matter, 78,
79, 81, 83, 124-5, 274, 297,
317; fortuity, 83^, 355; four
causes, 80; induction, 24, 77,
128, 136; influence on early
church, 88; influences, 76; in-
ternal perfecting principle,
76, 81-2, 102, 142, 211, 306,
338, 351; interpretation of
Empedocles, 55 ; movement,
89; mutilations, 75; natural
causation, 74; naturalist, 11,
71-87; order of creation, 100;
origin of life, 99, 352; pre-
eminence, 68; prepotency of
characters, 36; revival by
Leibnitz, 144; scale of life, 10,
11, 19, 76, 78, 79, 87, 97, 123,
177, 197, 231, 353; school, 89;
sensibility, 78; speculations,
31; studies, 33, 69-70, 71, 82;
survival of fittest, 10, 73-4,
87, 355; theories, 10, 176; vol-
umes, 69, 72, 75, 79, 81, 82,
83, 115, 118, 186; unity of
type, 351; von Baer's law, 37;
wants of animals, 78, 356.
Artificial Selection, 299; Bacon,
138; BuflFon, 197, 203; Dar-
win, 333-4; E. Darwin, 208;
Kant, 151.
Ascent of Life, 18; Aristotle,
78-9, 87; BufFon, 205. See
Echelle des Etres, Scale of
Life.
Ascent of Man, 353, 356; hand
development, 61 ; Helvetius,
205.
Asclepiads, dissection, 70.
Atavism, 36, 72, 297 ; opposition
by Naudin, 297, 298.
Atomism, doctrine of Democri-
tus, 91.
Attraction and Repulsion, Dide-
rot, Empedocles, Perrier, 171.
Augustine, 15, 130; causation,
110, 112, 113; Greek influence,
106; interpretation of Gene-
sis, 11, 106; on intellectual
freedom, 27; origin of life,
109; special creation views,
109, 110, 129.
Avempace, 15, 115, 117.
Avicenna, 115, 126; Latin trans-
lation, 107 J unif ormitarian-
ism, 115-6.
Bacon, Francis, 3, 9, 15, 29, 108,
132, 134, 135-tO, 143, 145, 159,
267; artificial selection, 138;
experimental evolution, 137-
39; induction, 25, 123, 135;
INDEX
381
mutability, 136; reasoning,
329; relative position, 14.0;
scale of life, 14-4; transitional
forms, 138-9; variation, 133,
136-7 ; views, 25, 28, 333 ; vol-
umes, 2, 135, 136, 139.
Bacon, Roger, 113-U, 135; ex-
perimental science, 114.; Greek
science, 107; investigation of
nature, 114.
Balance, Balancement, 34; Goe-
the, 275; loi de b. (Geof-
frey), 286. See Economy of
Growth.
Barenbach, volume, 153.
Bastian, dispute with Tyndall,
38.
Bible, 106, 110, 126; Book of
Job, 63; Bruno's opposition,
126; Philo's interpretation,
105-6, 129. See Genesis.
Bielschowsky, on Goethe, 267,
276; volume, 276.
Biogenesis. 37; Augustine, 109.
Biogenetic Law, 49, 307;
Meckel, 308, 319; von Baer,
36, 308, 319.
Biology, 46, 236, 349; Aristotle,
75 ; derivation of words, 65-6 ;
development, 32-6 ; history, 6 ;
in ancient Greece, 62-8; La-
marck's principles, 233-4;
Leibnitz, 142; term defined,
(Lamarck) 230, (Trevira-
nus) 283, 286.
Blumenbach, anatomist, 203,
269, 284.
Bonnami, speculations, 160;
transformist, 162-3.
Bonnet, 15, 162, 173-7, 179, 284;
catastrophism, 177; echelle
des etres, 20, 123, 176, 177,
196, 197, 231; emhoUement,
36, 160, 168, 173, 207; evolu-
tion, 174, 177; influence of
Leibnitz, 145, 175-6; internal
perfecting principle, 176; par-
thenogenesis, 175; predeter-
mination, 177; pre-existent
germs, 352; speculation, 160;
volume, 175.
Botany, 26, 221; Greek studies,
44; Lamarck, 226.
Branching Kv(;lution, 19; I^a-
marck, 211, 231, 353; Linnaus,
186; modern concej)tion, 20.
Bridges, J. H., on Descartes,
234.
Brinton, on Bruno, 124.
Bronn, 282.
Brooks, W. K., adaptations, 56;
translation of Plato, 73; vol-
ume, 73.
Broom, Robert, Owen on evo-
lution, 319.
Brown, botanist, 307; variation,
335.
Brown, Thomas, on E. Darwin,
215-17.
Browning, Darwinism, 63.
Bruno, 15, 107, 121-7, 267; Aris-
totelianism, 124-6; evolution-
ist, 29, 107; form, matter,
124-5; induction, 123; influ-
ences, 122; martyr, 121, 122;
method of interpretation, 25;
movement, 125; natural phi-
losophy, 122-7; perfectibility,
142; rationalist, 121, 122;
scale of life, 122-3, 125-6,
353; studies of man, 353, 356;
uniformity, 126; volume, 126.
Buckley, T. A., translation of
^schylus, 63.
Buffon, 9, 15, 16, 26, 118, 132,
141, 146, 156, 162, 185, 221,
222, 224, 230, 232, 233, 245,
257, 264, 274, 278, 284, 286,
291, 303, 314, 336, 342; adap-
tation, 147, 354; ascent of
man, 205, 356; cell doctrine,
180; change of views, 200;
comparison with Kant, 150,
with Linnaeus, 190-2; contri-
bution to evolution, 199-200;
cosmogony, 192, 237; degener-
ation, 34, 150, {dinaturee)
193, 288; design, 192; environ-
382
INDEX
ment, 147, 196, 197, 198, 223,
255, 259, 310, 311, 328; factor
in evolution, 333; fixity, 193,
196; geographic segregation,
197, 310; influence, 189, on
Bory, 292, on Goethe, 268, 274;
heredity, 147, 200, 201; inter-
pretative evolution, 188-201;
modification, 197, 328, 344;
mutability, 150, 188, 189,
192-3, 223; origin of man,
184; pangenesis, 207, 344;
plant evolution, 223, 251-2;
population, 206, 287; rank,
189, 196; scale of life, 197;
school, 191, 257, 259, 263, 265,
309-12; selection, 146-7, 340,
(artificial) 203; species, 188,
190, 193; special creation,
195-6, 200; speculation, 190;
struggle for existence, 196,
202, 287, 353; survival of fit-
test, 150, 196, 198, 205, 300,
320, 355; theories, 168, 200,
206, 352, 356; transformism,
176, 259; transmission of ac-
quired characters, 200, 201,
240, 244, 355; transmutation,
200; uniformitarianism, 199;
unity of type, 194-5; varia-
tion, 193, 306; volume, 197.
Camper, anatomist, 269.
Carus, 16, 307, 341; apprecia-
tion of Goethe, 268-9 ; volume,
268.
Catastrophism, 199; Bonnet,
177; Cuvier, 279, 304-5; op-
posed by Lamarck, 237.
Causation, 87; Anaxagoras, 60;
Aristotle, 78; Augustine, 112;
Darwin, 86; Democritus, 59;
E. Darwin, 209, 214; Emped-
ocles, 52, 54; Epicurus, 90;
Heraclitus, 51; Kant, 151-2,
214; Parmenides, 51; prob-
lems, 102; Xenophanes, 50.
See Natural Causation.
CeU Doctrine, Buffon, E. Dar-
win, Lamarck, 180; Oken,
Schleiden, Schwann, 181.
Cellular Tissue, Lamarck, 233,
252; Oken, 252.
Chambers, Robert, 16; abiogen-
esis, 313, 316, 352; cosmic evo-
lution, 313; evolution theories,
314-16; internal perfecting
tendency, 306, 312, 315 ; modi-
fication, 315; origin of man,
313-14; reception of theories,
312-13; volume, 305, 306, 312,
313.
Chance, Darwin's use, 337-8.
Compare Fortuity.
Characters, infantile recapitu-
lation, 49; stem, 275.
Chevreul, 16, 307.
Church, opposition to science,
107, 108, 118, 121, 122, 196; in
science, 105; influence of Aris-
totle, 88; orthodoxy, 135.
Citations, abiogenesis, 204, 289-
90; adaptation, 56, 74; Anax-
agoras, 60-1 ; Anaximander,
47; attraction and repulsion,
171; Augustine, 111; biology,
7; Bonnet's embryology, 174;
causation, 148, 151-2; com-
pensation, 72; continuity, 144;
creation, 95-6, 192; degenera-
tion, 158; Descartes, 104; en-
vironment, 240; Erigena, 112;
evolution, 21 ; experimental
science, 114; fecundity of spe-
cies, 198; fixity, 222, 267; Goe-
the, 104, 220, 276; gradation,
235-6; Greek science, 40, 66;
growth, 212; human hand, 61;
higher generalization, 285; in-
heritance, 75 ; interpretation
of Empedocles, 53; Kant, 302;
Lamarck theories, 225; limit
of knowledge, 148-9; meta-
morphosis, 158; modification,
213; monism, 58; mutability,
143, 209, 332-3; natural selec-
tion, 298-9; nature, 220; on
INDEX
383
Cuvier, 279-80, 304-5; on
Darwin, 302; on da Vinci,
120-1; on Deinocritus, 57; on
E. Darwin, 215-17; organs,
242-3; palaeontology, geology,
115-6, 119, 266; phyletic tree,
248; Promethean gift, 64;
permanence of species, 302;
science vn. theology, 27, 28;
Sophocles, 66; Spanish phi-
losophers, 116-17; survival of
fittest, 198; transformism,
165; transitional forms, 138-
9; unity of type, 154, 194-5,
272; variations, 137; wants of
animals, 242.
Classification, 233; BuflFon, 190;
Cuvier, 187; Lamarck, 227;
Linnaeus, 186-7, 190; Wallace,
322.
Climate, influence on man, 150.
See Environment.
Colonna, Fabio, palaeontologist,
120.
Coloration, E. Darwin, 208, 210,
214; Lamarck, 233.
Colvin, Sidney, encyclopaedist,
120.
Comparative Anatomy, 26, 221 ;
Cuvier, 279; E. Darwin, 208;
early Greek, 65; Geoffroy,
258; Serres' relation to em-
bryology, 309; Sicilian School
of Medicine, 67. See Anat-
omy, Goethe, Man.
Compensation of Growth, 71;
Aristotle, 72; Treviranus,
286. See Balancement.
Comte, revival of Lamarck, 228,
253.
Continuity, Goethe, 145; Leib-
nitz, 142, 144, 173, 175; Ro-
binet, 179.
Cooper, William A., translator,
267.
Cope, archaesthetism, 212, 238,
356; volume, 212.
Cosmic Evolution, Chambers,
313; Kant, 151-2.
Cosmogony, 30, 46 ; Goethe, 268.
See Creation.
Cottcrill, on Augustine, 110,
111; volume, 109.
Creation, Cuvier, 280-1 ; Goethe,
271; Gregory of Nyssa, 108;
Leibnitz, 175; Spencer, 22,
311. See Special Creation,
Successive Creations.
Cuvier, 13, 26, 155, 191, 245, 264,
269, 278-83, 286, 289, 316; ap-
preciation of Goethe, 268;
catastrophism, 279, 304-5;
change of views, 279; classifi-
cation, 187; creation, 280-1;
defense of emboitement, 36;
definition of species, 278; dis-
cussion with St. Hilaire, 257,
263-6, 276-7; estimate of De-
mocritus, 58; founder of pa-
laeontology, 278, 284; fixity,
221, 278, 281; nomenclature,
191 ; opposition to Lamarck,
228, 253; prestige, 282; rea-
soning, 263; status as evolu-
tionist, 257, 278; supporter of
Bonnet, 174; school of facts,
185, 279, 281-3, 295; theories,
279-80; volume, 279, 304.
D'Archiac, disciple of Cuvier,
281.
Darwin, Charles, 7, 16, 17, 46,
82, 156, 168, 196, 201, 202, 212,
215, 228, 304, 305, 327-48, 350;
anticipation, 5, 72, 204; causa-
tion, 86; chance, 337-8, 339;
change of views, 341-2, 344-
5; contrast with Lamarck,
337; descent theory, 180; de-
sign, 339; environment, 342-3;
fixity, 304; heredity problems,
343; historic position, 8-9;
indebtedness to predecessors,
4, 327; induction, 327; influ-
ences, 325, 328, 330, 332, 335,
C40, 341, 342, 343; interpreta-
tion of Naudin, 299; Kant's
Newton, 149; modification.
384
INDEX
344; mutability, 323-4, 332-3;
opinion of Lamarck, 228, 229,
335; opponent of saltation,
340; opposition, 14; pangene-
sis, 65, 169, 201, 344; parallel-
ism of thought (Wallace), 6,
345-8; permanence of species,
302; selection, 296, (artificial)
333-4, (natural) 322, 327,
328, 336, 340, 341, 343, (sex-
ual) 334; struggle for exist-
ence, 334, 340-1; survival,
355; theories, 23, 73, 260, 328;
Wells's theories, 320; uni-
formity, 330; use and disuse,
345; variation, 334, 342, 343,
347; volumes, 211, 295, 296,
318, 320, 332, 334, 338, 341,
342, 344, 345, 348; voyage,
325, 330-4.
Darwin, Erasmus, 9, 16, 26, 167,
189, 201, 202-18, 224, 225, 254,
314, 329, 340; abiogenesis, 203,
204, 352; artificial selection,
208; causation, 209, 211, 212,
214, 354; cell doctrine, 180;
coloration, 208, 210, 214; com-
parative anatomy, 208; cross
fertilization, 204 ; embryology,
207, 208; environment, 208;
evolution, 185, 203, 206, 217-
18, (word) 21; filament, 209,
210, 211, 352; generation, 207-
14; hand, 205; indebtedness to
predecessors, 4, 9, 202-3; ir-
ritability, 212; Lamarckian
theory, 206 ; modification, 206,
213; mutability, 209; mutila-
tions, 208; opposition to Bon-
net, 174; origin of life, 207,
of man, 184, 204-5, of spe-
cies, 210-11, 214; perfecting
tendency, 210-11 ; poet of evo-
lution, 63, 202; population
checks, 206; relation to La-
marck, 222; selection (sex-
ual), 209; struggle for exist-
ence, 205-6, 353; survival of
fittest, 205, 355, 356; trans-
f ormism, 212 ; transmission,
209, 213, 240, 355; unity of
type, 208 ; use and disuse, 328 ;
volumes, 174, 202, 203, 207,
208, 212, 213, 214, 217, 222,
223, 224, 232, 271, 332; wants
of animals, 209-10, 211, 213.
Darwinism, Darwinismus, antic-
ipation, 5, 14, 23, 88, 251, 299;
Bruno, 125; Empedocles, 55;
Geoffroy, 260; reception, 324;
versified by Tennyson and
Browning, 63.
Da Vinci, 119-21, 130, 132.
D'Azyr, Vicq, 33; unity of plan,
318.
De Blainville, palaeontologist,
282.
De CandoUe, botanist, 282; ge-
ographic distribution, 335 ;
struggle for existence, 340,
353.
Deduction, 264; Greek method,
24, 42; Lamarck, 254; Schel-
ling, 155-6, 182, 257. See Rea-
soning.
Degeneration, 32, 80, 193, 195,
226, 318, 354; defined, 22, 34;
Goethe, 275; history, 34, 35;
Kant, 150; Linnaeus, 188;
Owen, 319; Treviranus, 288.
See Denaturee.
Degradation, defined, 23; Geof-
froy, 257, 262; Lamarck, 231,
233, 246.
Degraff, discoverer of ovum, 36.
D'Halloy, 16, 307.
D'Holbach, Bible of atheism,
170.
De Lanessan, 196, 198, 223.
De Maillet, 15, 179, 204; antici-
pation of Lamarckism, 164;
contribution to evolution, 167;
environment, 164-5; habit,
164-5; interpretation of Gen-
esis, 166, 167; modification,
164; origin of life, 166, 352,
353, of species, 164; recogni-
INDEX
385
tion of fossils, 163; specula-
tion, 160; transforraism, 161.,
261; transmission of acciuircd
characters, 161, 22i, 355; vol-
umes, 163, 165, 166.
De Maupertuis, 15, 150, 161,
167-70; fortuity, 169-70; gen-
eration, 183; influence of
Leibnitz, 145; monism, 352;
origin of species, 168, 169;
pangenesis, 168-9, 344; specu-
lation, 160; survival of fittest,
150; transformism, 168.
Democritus, 15, 34, 43, 51, 65,
67-9, 62, 71, 73, 75, 83, 90,
161, 168, 172; abiogenesis, 94;
atomism, 91 ; comparative
anatomy, 57, 68; contribution
to evolution, 59; fortuity, 67,
74; heredity, 201 ; influence on
Epicurus, 91 ; materialism, 67,
88; monism, 58; opponent of
design, 57, 59, 91 ; origin of
life, 59, 353; pangenesis, 344.
Denature ( c ) , Buff on's term,
193, 288; defined, 23.
Deperet, on Cuvier, 279-81 ; vol-
umes, 279, 281.
Descartes, 15, 29, 104, 132, 134,
139, 140-2, 143, 145, 171, 234;
contribution to evolution, 156;
doctrine of force, 144; mech-
anism, 140; natural causation,
141 ; opponent of special cre-
ation, 141, 234; volume, 140.
Descent Theory, 19, 22; Dar-
win, 180; E. Darwin, 203;
Goethe, 267; Lamarck (found-
er), 228; Oken's anticipa-
tion, 180; Wallace, 322. See
Ascent, EchcUe des Etres,
Phylogeny, Scale of Life.
Design, 44, 65, 84, 87; Anax-
agoras, 44, 59, 60; Aristotle,
79, 87; Buffon, 192; Darwin,
339; Democritus, 69; Goethe,
192; opposed by Democritus,
57, by Lucretius, 93-4; Plato,
44; problem in causation, 102;
Socrates, W. See Teleology.
Development, 80, 193, 226; ab-
normal, see Teratology; Did<'-
rot, 171-2; Goethe, 275;
Haldeman, 335; history of
theory, 35; hypothesis, 22; in-
dividual, see Ontogeny; I>a-
marck, 232; parallelism in,
264.
DeVries, mutation theory, 261.
Diderot, 15, 170-3; attraction
and repulsion, 171; develop-
ment of organisms, 171-2;
generation, 183; germ theory,
352; influence of Leibnitz,
145; man's supremacy, 353;
monism, 352; on imagination,
190; opponent of design, 170;
survival of fittest, 172-3, 355;
speculation, 160; volume, 170.
Diodes, anatomist, 67.
Diogenes, 43; origin of life, 60,
353.
Dioscoridus, naturalist, 97.
Dissection, Asclepiads, 70; ini-
tiation, 67; practice, 33,
(Aristotle) 71.
Divergence, Maupertuis, 170.
See Branching Evolution,
Embranchement.
Doctrine of Derivation, 22.
D'Orbigny, disciple of Cuvier,
281 ; successive creations,
281-2.
Draper, volume, 116.
Driesch, volume, 81.
Dualism, 30; Anaxagoras, 60;
Aristotle, 88.
Dujardin, 16, 307.
Dumeril, invertebrate zoologist,
282.
Duret, 160; speculation, 159;
transformist (direct), 162;
volume, 162.
Earth Slime, 60, 62; Empedo-
cles, 99. See Ur-Srhlrim.
Echelle des Etres, Bonnet, 20,
386
INDEX
123, 176, 177, 196, 197, 231.
See Scale of Life.
Ecole des Faits. See Schools.
Economy of Growth, law, 33-4.
See Balancement.
Eleatics, 43, 64; school, 50-1.
Emhoiteinent, 36; Bonnet, 160,
168, 207.
Embranchement, Lamarck, 234,
246. See Branching Evolu-
tion.
Embryology, 17, 250, 263; Bon-
net, 173, see Emboitement;
Cuvier, 279; E. Darwin, 207,
208; embryologists, 307-9;
Empedocles, 52; growth of
science, 36; schools, 174.
Empedocles, 15, 43, 51, 52-7, 61,
63, 71, 73, 83, 86, 90, 125, 161,
172, 340; abiogenesis, 52, 56;
adaptation, 59, 353; attrac-
tion and repulsion, 171; blood
studies, 67; causation, 52, 54;
father of evolution idea, 52,
350; fortuity, 52-3, 55, 74,
101, 338; interpretation by
Lucretius, 53-4, 91-4; La-
marckism, 55-6; man's su-
premacy, 353 ; materialism,
88; monism, 352; mythology,
53; natural selection, 54-5;
origin of life, 52, 54, 99; poet
of evolution, 202; principles,
100-1; struggle for existence.
test, 54-5, 88, 91, 95, 101, 172,
354; syngenesis, 36.
Entelechy, 234; Aristotle, 79.
Environment, 17, 80, 233, 306,
357; Buffon, 147, 188-9, 196,
197, 198, 223, 255, 259, 310,
311, 328, 342; Darwin, 342-3;
de Maillet, 164-5, 167; effect
on species, 192-3; E. Darwin,
208; Geoffroy, 259, 310, 314;
Lamarck, 223, 231, 232-3,
240, 242, 244, 251; living, 287;
St. Hilaire, 295; Spencer, 311-
12; Treviranus, 286-7, 288-9;
value in evolution, 32; von
Buch, 310.
Epicurus, 15, 43, 90-1; abio-
genesis, 91; causation, 90; in-
fluence of Democritus, 91;
materialism, 88 ; mechanism,
88-91; monism, 88; revived
by Lucretius, 91-3; school, 43,
45, 90; survival of fittest, 95,
354.
Epigenesis, 35-6, 42, 173, 279;
Aristotle, 35; Harvey, 72.
Erasistratus, 43, 89.
Erdmann, 106; Bruno, 123.
Erigena, 112-13; abiogenesis,
106; gradual creation, 112-13.
Evolution, 58, 180; Anaximan-
der, 47; anticipation, 44;
Aristotle, 10, 90; Augustine,
110; Bonnet, 174, 177; Buffon,
200, 206; central ideas, 144;
contribution of Aristotle, 75,
of Bruno, 123-7, of Democri-
tus, 59, of geology, 279, of
Goethe, 271-2, of Greece, 10,
11, 39-102, 136, of Linnaeus,
185, of Lucretius, 96-7, of
miscellaneous writers, 218,
303-27, of natural philoso-
phers, 132-56; definition, 20,
23; Descartes, 234; E. Dar-
win, 203, 206, 217-18; eigh-
teenth century, 159-218;
emergent (Morgan), 61; Em-
pedocles, 52, 56; environment
of idea, 145; exponents, 34;
Fathers and Schoolmen, 11;
first use of term, 35; four es-
sential features, 79-80; Geof-
froy, 258; history, 3-5, 7-17,
19-27, 31, 32, 51, 221, 222,
303-4, 350-1, 358-9; hostility
to, 18, 36, 37, 108, 118, 122,
161, 217, 265, 294, 318-19, 323-
4; Hume, 146; indebtedness,
29, 77; Kant, 150; Lamarck's
laws, 231, 238-9, 350; law of
INDEX
387
Nature, 17-23, 30, 3i9; Leib-
nitz, 144; movements, 13-14,
303; modern, 131; nomencla-
ture, 20-3, 173, 231; of man,
63; of species, 188; of types,
195; periods, 14-10; poets, (53,
93, 202; renaissance, 9; Robi-
net, 162; saltatory, 201; sci-
entific interpretation, 23-7;
Spencer, 22; Treviranus, 284,
288; von Baer's law, 30-7.
See Plant Evolution.
Experimental Science, Aris-
totle, 77; F. Bacon, 137-9; R.
Bacon, 114; da Vinci, 121.
Extinction, of organs, 243; of
species, 289; of types, 250.
Fathers and Schoolmen, 11, 108-
14; interpretation of Genesis,
100.
Fecundity of Species. See Pop-
ulation.
Filament, 352; E. Darwin, 209-
11.
Filiation, 15, 22, 33, 180, 221;
Buffon, 201 ; Cuviers opposi-
tion, 279; defined, 23; Geof-
frey, 257, 203; Goethe, 274^5;
Lamarck, 24.5, 240, 297; Nau-
din, 297; St. Hilaire, 295.
See Descent, Embranchement,
Phylogeny.
'Finality,' Naudin, 297-8.
Fixity, of characters, 167,
(Bory, Naudin) 293; of spe-
cies, 20, 221, 278, (Agassiz)
281, 324, (Buffon) 190, 193,
(Cuvier) 278, (Darwin) 304,
(Goethe) 207, (Lamarck)
222, (Linnaeus) 187, 207.
Force, Descartes, Leibnitz, 144.
Form, Matter, 81, 80; Aris-
totle, 01, 78, 79, 80, 83, 124^5,
297, 317; Bruno, 124-5; Goe-
the, 274; Owen, 317.
Fortuity, 83-4, 355; de Mauper-
tuis, 109-70; Democritus, 57,
74; Empedocles, 52-3, 65, 74,
101, 338; in early Greece, 64-
6; problem in causation, 102.
Fossils, biological study, 32;
early theories, 120, 103-4;
evidence, 279; studied by
Darwin, 331, da Vinci, 119-
20, de Maillet, 103, Trevira-
nus, 289, Xenophanes, 50.
Fracastoro, palaeontologist, 120.
Function(s), change of, 80;
Greek speculations, 67; or-
ganic life, 72; relation to
structure, 286.
Galen, 33, 43, 45, 67, 90, 97; in-
termaxillary bone, 34.
Generation, Buffon, 168; de
Maupertuis, 183; Diderot,
183; E. Darwin, 207-14;
Oken, 183; Robinet, 180, 183.
See Abiogenesis, Biogenesis,
Epigenesis, Pangenesis, Par-
thenogenesis, Perigenesis,
Syngenesis.
Genesis, 27, 105, 193; inter-
pretation, 106, 107, 112, (Au-
gustine) 11, (Bonnet) 177,
(de Maillet) 166, 107, (Lin-
naeus) 187, (Suarez) 11.
Geoffroy St. Hilaire, 13, 15, 10,
33, 155, 191, 224, 227, 241, 251,
253, 254-6, 260, 209, 273, 278,
282, 280, 314, 335, 342; anat-
omist (philosophical) 258,354,
(transcendental) 310; Buf-
fonian, 257, 259; Darwinism,
200; degradation, 257, 202;
discussion with Cuvier, 257,
203-0, 270-7 ; environment,
259, 310, 314; filiation, 257;
Lamarckian, 257; mutation,
201; principle of balance-
ment, 34, 280; natural selec-
tion, 200, 340; reasoning, 258,
204; saltation, 201, 339;
school, 295; survival of fit-
test, 200; transformation,
257, 259-02; transmutation,
388
INDEX
257; unity of plan, 264-5, 318,
of type, 258, 351; volumes,
258, 259, 269.
Geographic Distribution, de
Candolle, 335; von Buch,
309-10; Wallace, 322.
Geographic Isolation, Buffon,
197, 310; von Buch, 310;
Wagner, 197.
Geology, 26, 221, 236 ; contribu-
tion to evolution, 30, 279;
Goethe, 268.
Germ(s), Anaxagoras, 171;
Greek doctrine, 166; order in
Nature, 87; origin of life, 99,
352; pangenetic theory, 65;
pre-existent, 306, 352; Robi-
net, 179.
Gessner, systematist, 185.
Godron, 16, 307.
Goethe, 9, 13, 16, 104, 184, 191,
201, 220, 224, 254, 263, 266-
78, 283, 286, 291, 303, 306; ap-
preciation, 4, 268-9; archety-
pal theory, 316; balance, 275;
causation, 354; continuity,
145 ; contribution to evolution,
271-2; Cuvier-St. Hilaire dis-
cussion, 263, 276-7; degener-
ation, 275; design, 192; devel-
opment, 275; economy of
growth, 34; filiation, 274-5;
fixity, 267; form, 274; Geof-
froy, 258; ignorance of La-
marck, 253, 268; influence of
habit in form, 270 ; influences,
155, 267, 268; intermaxillary
bone, 35, 269, 270, 272-3; met-
amorphosis, 158; morphology,
275-6; origin of organs, 274;
ontogeny, 270-1 ; poet of evo-
lution, 63, 202; scientist, 229,
266, 267, 271, 276; structure,
272 (skull) 267, (vestigial)
273; transmutation, 266; unity
of type, 269-70, 272 ; volumes,
267, 268, 270, 271, 272, 274.
Good, John Mason, translator,
95.
Gradation, 133, 231; defined, 22;
Lamarck, 235-6, 247, 255.
Grant, 16, 306.
Grant, Dr., 332.
Gray, Asa, 323, 324, 339, 346.
Greece, Greeks, 232; character-
istics, 62; environment for
evolution, 31, 42; legacy, 98-
102; science and philosophy,
7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 30, 39-102, 105,
134, 135, 224, 349-57.
Gregory of Nyssa, 15; creation,
106, 108.
Guttler, creation, 112; on Bru-
no, 123; on Spanish philoso-
phers, 116-7; volume, 109.
Habit, 233; de Maillet, 164-5,
167; Goethe, 270; Lamarck,
226, 231, 241, 328; St. Vin-
cent, 293.
Haeckel, 6, 147, 149, 151, 196,
268, 274, 276; adaptations,
49; Greek philosophy, 45;
Kant, 148; opinion of Anaxi-
mander, 46, of Lamarck, 229,
of Oken, 180-1, of Trevira-
nus, 283, 291 ; perigenesis, 169;
phylogeny (tree), 248; vol-
umes, 148, 305, 308, 309.
Haldeman, 16, 306, 310-11; de-
velopment theory, 335; modi-
fication, 311; on Lamarckism,
310-11; transmutation, 311.
Hale, use of 'evolution,' 21.
Hand, Human, adaptation, 68;
E. Darwin, 205 ; factor in de-
velopment, 61, 356.
Harvey, 131, 140, 284; epigene-
sis, 72; inductive method, 25;
law, 37.
Helvetius, 150; ascent of man,
205; opposable thumb, 356;
survival, 355.
Henslow, 305.
Heraclitus, 15, 43, 51, 71, 75;
causation, 51; fixed order.
INDEX
389
100; movement, 350; perfecti-
bility, 100.
Heraphilus, 43, 89; anatomy,
67.
Herbert, W., 16; origin of spe-
cies, 309; plant evolution, 309;
struggle for existence, 340.
Herder, 9, 15, 132, 153-4, 155;
influence of Kant, 153; per-
fectibility, transformation,
153; unity of type, 154, 356;
volume, 153.
Heredity, 17; Buffon, 147, 200,
201; Darwin, 343; de Mau-
pertuis, 168-9; fixation of
characters, 293; Goethe's con-
ception, 275-6 ; physical basis,
201; St. Hilaire, 295; theories,
65, 75; transmission, 36, 72,
297. See Atavism, Generation.
Herschel, volume, 330.
Hippocrates, 75, 97; anatomy,
67; pangenesis, 344.
Hofmeister, botanist, 307.
Homology in Structure, 33;
Aristotle, 71.
Hooker, 323, 346; Darwin let-
ters, 335, 336, 342.
Humboldt, 284; volume, 330;
voyage, 331.
Hume, David, 15, 132, 203, 217;
generation, 146; survival of
fittest, 146, 355.
Huxley, 6, 12, 141, 226, 324, 343,
344; opinion of de Maillet, 165,
of Suarez, 128, of Treviranus,
283; saltations, 339; transla-
tion of Leibnitz, 143.
Induction, 6, 15, 16, 25, 26, 32,
156, 264; Aristotle, 24, 77, 87,
123, 136; F. Bacon, 24, 25,
123, 135, 136; Bruno, 123;
Darwin, 327, 334; Geoff roy,
258; growth of method, 8;
Harvey, 25; Mayo, 25.
Inheritance, Buffon, 147;
Goethe, 275-6; of habit, 35.
See Heredity, Transmission.
Intermaxillary Bone, Galen, 34-
6; Goethe, 35, 269, 270, 272-3;
significance, 269; Vesalius, 34.
Internal Perfecting Principle,
102, 172, 206, 211, 298, 312;
Aristotle, 81-2, 306, 338, 351;
Bonnet, 176; Chambers, 306,
315; Darwin refutation, 338;
E. Darwin, 210-11; Greek
theory, 102; Kolliker, Niigeli,
von Baer, 338. See Entelechy.
lonians, 43, 45, 50, 64 ; abiogene-
sis, 51.
Irritability, E. Darwin, 212;
Lamarck, 233.
Judd, John W., Cuvier's posi-
tion, 304-5; Darwin, 302; vol-
ume, 304.
Kant, 15, 29, 46, 132, 134, 146-
62, 159, 267, 284; artificial se-
lection, 151 ; causation, 147,
151-2, 214, 354; change of
views, 148; citation, 302; con-
tribution to evolution, 156;
cosmic evolution, 151-2; filia-
tion, 273; influence on Her-
der, 153; influences, 152;
man's anatomical kinship,
356; mechanism, 147-8; origin
of man, 150, of organs, 274;
perception of Nature, 30, 154;
survival of fittest, 150, 355;
teleology, 147-8; variation,
151; volume, 147.
Keyserling, pre-existing germs,
306.
Kielmeyer, nature philosophy,
155, 263.
Kinetogenesis. See Use and Dis-
use.
Kingsley, 329.
Kircher, speculation, 160; trans-
formism, 163; volume, 163.
Krause, 6; studies of Bruno,
125, of Darwin, 329, of E.
Darwin, 202, 203, 206, 224;
volume, 192.
390
INDEX
Lamarck, 4, 13, 16, 46, 150, 162,
167, 181, 189, 191, 196, 201,
213, 215, 236, 256, 257, 259,
263, 265, 266, 267, 269, 273,
274, 278, 283, 286, 288, 291,
299, 303, 314, 327, 329, 332,
336, 350; abiogenesis, 252-3;
adaptations, 314, 354; antici-
pated, 65, 72, 164; apprecia-
tion, 4, 228-9; biology (word),
65-6, 230; branching system,
19, 177, 211, 353; cell doctrine,
180; cellular tissue, 233; cita-
tion, 220; classification, 227,
233; coloration, 233; degrada-
tion, 231, 233, 246-7; descent
(founder), 228; development,
35, 232; discredited by Dar-
win, 335, 338; early views,
230; environment, 231-3, 240,
242, 244; extinction of tj^jes,
250; filiation, 245, 297; fixity,
222; four principles, 222;
gradation, 235-6, 247, 255;
habit, 226, 231, 233, 241; in-
fluence of Buffon, 189; influ-
ence on Bory, 292; irritabil-
ity, 233; modification, 328,
344; mutability, 222-3, 227,
245; origin of life, 252,
352, of man, 184, of organs,
231, 241, 242, of species, 227,
250; plant evolution, 223,
251-2; philosophy of nature,
234; reasoning, 254; scale of
life, 231; species, 233, 245;
status as evolutionist, 9, 19,
20, 185, 229, 249, 253-5; struc-
ture, function, 286; survival,
251; systematist, 226; teleol-
ogy, 235; theories, 23, 225,
229, 233, 254, 337; transform-
ism, 259; transmission, 6, 224,
229, 240, 244, 254, 259, 311,
328, 333, 355; transmutation,
228, 251, 296; uniformitarian-
ism, 230; unity of type, 232;
use and disuse, 233, 241, 328,
341; variation, 232, 293; vol-
umes, 65, 222, 223, 224, 225,
226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 232,
233, 235, 238, 239, 240, 241,
242, 247, 249, 255, 268, 271,
312, 313, 341; wants of ani-
mals, 240-1, 242.
Lamarckism, 23, 249, 306, 342;
E. Darwin, 206; Empedocles,
55-6; Goethe, 274; Haldeman,
310-11; LyeU's attitude, 325-
6, 332.
Lange, critic, on Bruno, 123; on
Democritus, 55 ; on Greek phi-
losophy, 44, 45; on Lucretius,
93.
Laplace, 46 ; transmission of ac-
quired adaptations, 224, 355.
Lasson, on Bruno, 125.
Lavater, 270.
Lawrence, Sir William, use of
'biology,' 66; volume, 66.
Lecoq, 16, 306, 307.
Leeuwenhoek, 131 ; discoverer
of spermatozoon, 36.
Leibnitz, 15, 29, 132, 134, 142-
6, 147, 202, 284; anticipated
by Bruno, 124; aphorism, 187;
continuity, 142, 144, 173, 175;
contribution to evolution, 133,
156; creation, 175; force, 144;
influence, 142, 145, 167, 175-6,
178; man's kinship, 356, ori-
gin, 353 ; mutability, 143 ; per-
fection chain, 20, 123, 142,
351; scale of life, 144, 353;
school, 145 ; unif ormitarian-
ism, 179; volume, 143.
Leidy, 16, 307.
Leonard, Wm. EUery, transla-
tor, 58, 92.
Lessing, 15, 132; law of devel-
opment, 153; scale of life,
153.
Lewes, Aristotle's work, 77.
Linnaeus, 16, 26, 128, 131, 134,
146, 156, 185-8, 203, 223, 227,
232, 245, 263, 266, 267, 278,
284; contrast with Bufifon,
INDEX
391
190-2; defeneration, 34, 188;
fixity, 187, 267; mutability,
188; school, 185, 191, 2(>3, 265,
309-12; species, 186, 188, 193;
systematist, 12, 186, 226; va-
riation, 143; volume, 186, 188,
190.
Loder, master of Goethe, 266,
270.
Loi de Balancement. See Bal-
ance.
Lucretius, 15, 42, 43, 91-7, 122,
172; abiogenesis, 94-5, 352;
Epicurean, 90; indebtedness
to predecessors, 91-2; inter-
pretation of Empedocles, 53-
4, 93; mechanism, 93, 94, 147;
monism, 68; origin of life, 92-
3, 95-6, 353; poet of evolu-
tion, 63, 93, 202; revival of
materialism, 88, 93; struggle
for existence, 353; survival of
fittest, 95, 354; tribute to
Greeks, 40; volumes, 92, 93,
95; Zeller, 94.
Lyell, 323, 325-6, 336, 338, 346;
da Vinci, 119; degeneration,
158; development, 21; expo-
sition of Lamarck, 311, 325-6,
332; natural causation, 325;
struggle for existence, 340;
transmutation, 22; uniform-
ity, 325; volumes, 22, 119, 332.
Malthus, 355; population, 206,
287, 334, 340; struggle for ex-
istence, 340, 348; volume, 197.
Man, anatomical kinship, 195,
269, 270, 272, 356; Greek re-
search on, 7, 98; influences in
evolution, 150; Lamarck's
studies, 230-1; migration, 150,
295; structure, 289; suprem-
acy, 79, 81, 178. See Ascent
of Man, Origin of Man.
Martins, Charles, biographer,
224, 272.
Materialism, conception of Na-
ture, 43; Democritus, 57; ex-
ponents, 88; Greek phase, 44,
45; school of Epicurus, 90.
Matter, Form. See under Form.
Matthew, Patrick, 16, 320, 321,
340; abiogenesis, 322; selec-
tion, 306, 322; species, 322;
survival, 355; volume, 321.
Maurice, 329.
Mayo, induction, 25.
McCloud, James, evolution, 218.
McCosh, James, 215.
Mechanism, Descartes, 140; Epi-
cureans, 88, 89, 91; Kant,
147-8; Leibnitz, 144; Lucre-
tius, 93, 94, 147.
Meckel, embryologist, 16, 36,
306, 307; biogenetic law, 308,
319.
Merck, 270.
Metempsychosis, Bruno, 126.
Migration, eflfect on man, 150,
295.
Milieu. See Environment.
Milton, Special Creation, 12.
Mind, conceptions of, 62; co-
ordination with hand, 68; vs.
matter, 61.
Mitchell, Stoics and Epicureans,
89.
Mivart, on Special Creation,
129; on Suarez, 128; volume,
127.
Modern Evolution, Lamarck,
249; periods, 15-16.
Modification, 17, 20, 75, 356;
Buffon, 197, 328, 344; Cham-
bers, 315; Darwin, 344; de
Maillet, 164; E. Darwin, 206,
213; Haldeman, 311; La-
marck, 328, 344; Owen, 318;
Treviranus, 289.
Monads, Leibnitz theory, 123,
142.
Monism, 30, 352; defined, 58;
Democritus, 58; Epicurus, 88;
Lucretius, 58.
Moore, Aubrey, on Augustine,
110.
More, H., use of 'evolution,' 21.
392
INDEX
Morgan, Lloyd, emergent evo-
lution, 61.
Morley, volume, 172.
Morphology, Goethe's theories,
275-6. See Structure.
Morse, letter from Darwin, 343.
Movement, Anaximander, 100;
Aristotle, 79-80, 89; Bruno,
125; essence of mutability,
100; Heraclitus, 350. See En-
telechy. Mutability.
Miiller, volume, 271.
Mutability, 26, 131, 133, 278;
anticipation, 307; Bacon's
perception, 136; Buffon, 150,
188, 189, 192-3, 223; Darwin,
323-4, 332-3; E. Darwin, 209;
early trend, 139 ; Greek ideas,
100-1; Lamarck, 222-3, 227,
245; Leibnitz, 143; Linnaeus,
188; St. Hilaire, 294-5.
Mutation, 65; de Vries, 261;
Geoff roy, 261. See Fortuity.
Mutilation, artificial, 208; inher-
ited, 75.
Mythology, conception of Na-
ture, 43; Greek phase, 44;
suppressed by Lucretius, 94-5.
Nageli, 307; internal perfecting
principle, 338.
Natural Causation, 29, 30, 88;
Anaximander, 47 ; Anaxim-
enes, 49-50; Aristotle, 74;
Augustine, 110; Descartes,
141; E. Darwin, 211, 212;
Greek perception, 30, 44;
Kant, 147; Lyell, 325; nat-
ural philosophers, 134^5 ; Spi-
noza, 145; Thales, 46.
Natural Philosophy, 9, 15, 27-
31, 132-56; Bacon, 135-40;
contribution to evolution, 29,
132-5; Descartes, 140-2; Her-
der, 153—4.; indebtedness to
Greek science, 134; interpre-
tation of Nature, 15, 16, 24-7;
Kant, 30, 146-52, 154; Kiel-
meyer, 155, 263; Lamarck,
234; Leibnitz, 142-6; Lessing,
153; Oken, 154, 180-4.
Natural Selection, 16, 23, 172;
Darwin, 327, 328, 336, 34],
343; Empedocles, 54r-5; Geof-
froy, 260; history of idea,
340; Matthew, 306, 322; Nau-
din, 298-9, 306; Wells, 306,
320-1. See Selection.
Naturalism, conception of Na-
ture, 43; Greek phase, 44, 62;
Strato, 89.
Naturalists, The Great, 185-
218; contribution to evolu-
tion, 132, 159.
Nature, anticipation and inter-
pretation, 1-38; design in,
84 ; duality, 86 ; Linnaean clas-
sification, see Linnaeus : philos-
ophy, see Natural Philosophy ;
operation, 84-5. See Natural
Causation, Order.
Naudin, 15, 16, 296-300, 303, 340;
atavism, 297, 298; expedition,
292; filiation, 297; 'finality,'
297-8; fixation of characters,
293; natural selection, 306;
origin of species, 198-9, 296;
'plasticity,' 297; transmuta-
tion, 296; type succession,
298-9; unity of type, 296-7.
Newton, 147, 149; uniformity,
146.
Nicholas of Cusa, Bruno's phi-
losophy, 123.
Nomenclature, Cuvier, 191;
Linnaeus, 186.
Norris, Cardinal, 130.
Oken, 15, 50, 154, 180-5; cell
doctrine, 162, 181; descent
theory, 180; generation, 183,
252; interpretation of Na-
ture, 182; origin of life, 182,
183, 184, 352, 353, of man,
184, of species, 159, 160; rela-
tive rank, 6, 181-2; skull
structure, 267, 316; transcen-
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INDEX
393
dental anatomy, 283, 31C;
Ur-Schleim theory, 182-i;
volumes, 160, 180, 181, 182.
Ontogeny, Goethe, 270-1.
Order in Nature, 81, 8M); Her-
aclitus, 100; vs. fortuity, 84.
Organs, origin of, Goethe, 274;
horns, 209; Kant, 274; La-
marck, 241, 242.
Orientals, characteristics, 62,
98; metempsychosis, 126.
Origin of Life, 18, 352-3; Anax-
agoras, 60, 62; Anaximenes,
50; Augustine, 109; by devel-
opment, 21 ; contribution of
geology, 30; de Maillet, 166;
Democritus, 59; Diogenes, 50;
E. Darwin, 207; Empedocles,
52, 54; Greek research, 99;
Lamarck, 252; Lucretius, 92-
3, 95-6; Oken, 162, 182-3;
Robinet, 179; Thales, 46;
Xenophanes, 50-1. See Abio-
genesis. Biogenesis, Cell Doc-
trine, Ur-Schleim Theory.
Origin of Man, 31, 49, 353; An-
aximander, 47-8; Buffon, 184;
Chambers, 31.3-14; E. Dar-
win, 184, 204-5; Greek stud-
ies, 45, 64; Kant, 150; La-
marck, 184; Oken, 184; Xe-
nophanes, 50-1.
Origin of Species, 27, 131, 174,
211, 343; Darwin, 328, 331,
343, (volume) 295, 296, 312,
318, 323, 324, .332, 334, 336,
338, 339, 342, 344, 348; de
Maillet, 164; de Maupertuis,
168, 169; E. Darwin, 210-11,
214; Herbert, 309; investiga-
tion, 256: Lamarck, 227, 250;
Linnaeus, 188; Matthew, 322;
Naudin, 296; New World,
198-9; Owen, 318-19; St.
Vincent, 292-3; speculations,
132; Suarez, 128; Treviranus,
290-1.
Osborn, volumes, 62, 98, 106,
191, 323, 327, 345, 348.
Owen, 13, 16, 316-19; anatomy,
316; appreciation of Goethe,
268; degeneration, 319; form,
matter, 317; internal jjcrfect-
ing princii)le, 3()<); riKMlifica-
tion, 318; oi)p()n('nt of Dar-
win, 318; origin of species,
318-19; progressionist, 312;
skull structure, 267, 316-17;
special creation, 317; trans-
mutation, 318; unity of plan,
318, 351-2; views, 282; vol-
ume, 318.
Packard, estimate of Lamarck,
249; volume, 226.
Palaeontology, 26, 163, 176, 221;
contribution to evolution, 20;
Cuvier (founder), 278, 279;
da Vinci, 119-20; Owen, 317;
rudiments, 119-20, 130, 201,
250. See Fossils.
Pangenesis, Aristotle, 75; Buf-
fon, 201, 207; Darwin, 169,
344; de Maupertuis, 168;
Greek anticipation, 65; theo-
rists, 344.
Parallelism of Thought, 6; Dar-
win-Wallace, 223, 345-8; La-
marck-E. Darwin, 223, 225-6,
232; struggle for existence,
53.
Parmenides, 43, 71 ; causation,
51; origin of man, 51,
Parthenogenesis, Bonnet, 175.
Pascal, 25; GeofiFroy's interpre-
tation, 146.
Pasteur, 38.
Peale, Rembrandt, 256.
Perfectibility, Perfecting Prin-
ciple, 80, 178, 350; Aristotle,
77, 82, 142; Bruno, 123, 124,
142; Herder, 153; Leibnitz,
20, 123, 142.
Perigenesis, Haeckel, 169.
Peripatetics, 43, 89.
Perrier, 170, 257, 259; attrac-
tion and repulsion, 171; on
394
INDEX
Geoff roy, 260; volume, 167,
187, 263.
Philo of Alexander, interpreta-
tion of Bible, 105-6, 129.
Phylogeny, 33, 263; branching
tree, 248; Treviranus, 287-8.
Physicists, 43, 51-88; anticipa-
tion of evolution idea, 51.
Plant Evolution, Buff on, 223,
251-2; E. Darwin, 214; Her-
bert, 309; Lamarck, 223,
251-2.
Elasticity' of Organisms, Nau-
din, 297.
Plato, 43, 55, 61, 76, 77, 105;
Aristotelian philosophy, 76-
7; design, 44; final cause,
113; transmission of acquired
characters, 73, 355.
Pliny, naturalist, 98; volume,
98.
Polybus, anatomist, 67.
Population, Buffon, 198, 287;
checks, 206; Malthus, 197,
287, 334; Treviranus, 287.
Post-Aristotelian School, 43,
88-98.
Pouchet, 38.
Preaxagoras, 43; pupil of Aris-
totle, 89.
Predetermination, Bonnet, 177;
Naudin, 297.
Prepotency, of characters, 36;
of parent stock, 72.
Progressionists, 312-19.
Pyrrho, 43.
Pythagoreans, 43.
Quatrefages, 196, 200, 206, 245,
257, 259; Naudin's views, 296,
298; St. Vincent's views,
292-3.
Rafinesque, 16, 306.
Ray, criteria of species, 186;
systematist, 131, 185-6.
Reaumur, 175; defense of em-
boitementf 36.
Reasoning Methods, Bacon, 123,
135, 329, 333; Darwin, 328-9,
331, 333-4; Goethe, 273; Lin-
naean school, 263; speculative
writers, 264. See Deduction,
Induction, Schools.
Recapitulation of Ancestry in
Foetus. See Biogenetic Law.
Respiration, Geoffroy's factor
in transformism, 259-60.
Reversion. See Atavism.
Robinet, 15, 177-80; conception
of evolution, 162; continuity,
179;. generation, 180, 183;
germs, 179, 183, 352; influence
of Leibnitz, 145; perfecting
tendency, 178, 353; scale of
life, 177, 178; speculation,
160, 178-9; uniformitarian-
ism, 179; volumes, 177, 178,
179.
Romanes, interpretation of
Aristotle, 68, 81.
Roscellinus, abiogenesis, 106.
Sachs, botanist, 307.
St. Hilaire, Geoffroy. See Geof-
froy.
St. Hilaire, Isidore, 16, 196, 199,
257, 259, 294-6, 303, 307; ap-
preciation of Goethe, 268;
definition of species, 245; de
Maillet, 165 ; environment,
295; filiation, 295; fixity, 294-
5; heredity, 295; tribute to
Schelling, 155; volumes, 245,
263, 294.
St. Vincent, Bory, 16, 291-3,
303; abiogenesis, 292; fixa-
tion of specific characters,
293; habit, 293; origin of spe-
cies, 292-3; successor of La-
marck, 291.
Saltation, Geoffroy, 261, 339;
Huxley, 339 ; opposed by Dar-
win, 340.
Sandys, John Edwin, encyclo-
paedist, 98.
Scale of Life, 19, 186, 353; Aris-
INDEX
305
totle, 10, 11, 19, 76, 78, 79, 87,
97, 123, 177, 197, 2'M; \Unmvt,
20, 123, 176, 177, 196, 197, 231 ;
IJruno, 122-3, 125-6; Butfon,
197; Lamarck, 231; Leibnitz,
14i; Lcssing, 153; Robinct,
177, 178. See Ascent, Descent,
Echelle des Etres.
Sceptics, 43.
Schaaffhausen, 16, 306, 307.
Schelling, 15, 29, 132, 154-6,
263, 284, 295; living environ-
ment, 286-7; nature philoso-
phy, 151—5; reasoning, 155,
182, 257; relative position,
155; volume, 154.
Schleiden, Schwann, cell doc-
trine, 181, 207, 306.
Schoolmen. See Fathers.
Schools, Buffon, 191; Cuvier
(Ecole des Fails), 185, 279,
281-3, 295; Linnsean, 185, 191.
Schultze, exposition of Kant,
147.
Science, awakening, 130-2 ;
Bruno, 123-7; church hostil-
ity, 11, 107, 108, 118, 121, 122,
130, 196; contribution to evo-
lution, 23-7, 265; da Vinci,
119-21; Egyptian, 67; expo-
nents, 131; extension, 15, 31,
32; fallacies, 12; Greek, 45,
62-8, 98-102; in Arabia, 97,
115; indebtedness to natural
philosophers. 29 ; orthodoxy,
135; systematists, 131. See
Arabian Science, Greek Sci-
ence.
Sedgwick, 305.
Selection, 355 ; artificial, see Ar-
tificial Selection; BuflFon, 146-
7, 340; exponents, 133, 320-
3; organic, 229; Darwin, 296,
322, 327, 328, 333-4, 336, 340,
341, 343; E. Darwin, 209. See
Natural Selection.
Semper, letters from Darwin,
342, 343.
Sensibility, Aristotle, 78; Di-
derot, 170-1. See Irritability.
Serres, 1(>, 306, 314; embryology,
308-9, 354; volume, 308.
Singer, Charles, biology, 7-8;
experimental science (Ba-
con), 114; CJreek science, 10,
66-7; volumes, 7, (Hi, (JH, 114.
Socrates, 43, 7(1; basis of Aris-
totle's philosophy, 76-7; de-
sign, 44.
Siimmering, anatomy, 269.
Special Creation, 11, 12, 14, 20,
21, 110-11, 217, 313, 324, 331;
Buffon, 195-6, 200; domi-
nance, 130; E. Darwin, 212;
exponents, 34, 352; rejection
by Aristotle, 81, by Augustine,
110; Lamarck, 236; 'Miltonic
HjT)othesis,' 12; Owen, 317;
opposed by Descartes, 141,
by Spencer, 311; problems,
128-9; status in seventeenth
century, 11; Suarez, 121, 128.
Species, defined, 245, 278, 325;
fecundity, see Population;
fixity, see Fixity; genesis, 12;
Linnaeus, 186, 188, 193; mi-
gration, see Migration; sta-
bility, 294, 302, 312; succes-
sion, 322; term, 233; tran-
sitional forms, 138-9. See
Origin of Species, Variabil-
ity, Variation.
Speculation, Buffon, 190; evo-
lutionists, 132, 159-185; Schel-
ling, 182; writers, 13, 15.
Spencer, Herbert, 16, 55, 56,
311-12; environment, 311-12;
evolutionist, 22, 311; La-
marckism, 224, 229, 341, 356;
volume, 22.
Sperling, systematist, 185.
Spinoza, 29, 267; natural causa-
tion, 145.
Spontaneous Generation. See
Abiogenesis.
Steno, Nicholaus, anatomist,
120.
396
INDEX
Stoics, 43; philosophy, 88-9;
physics, 122.
Strato of Lampsacus, internal
principle, 89; naturalism, 89.
Structure (s), adaptive, 85-6;
analogy in, 71, 78; basis of
Linnaean classification, 187;
Empedocles, 161-2; heredity
changes, 208; homology in,
71; origin of theory, 82; pur-
posive, 82; relation to func-
tion, 286; skull, 267; teeth, 74;
uniformity, 146; unity in spe-
cial creation, 236; vertebrate,
56, 272; vestigial, 32, 272,
273, 354. See Intermaxillary
Bone, Morphology.
Struggle for Existence, 299,
348, 353; ancient parallel, 53;
BuflPon, 196, 202, 287; Dar-
win, 334, 340-1; E. Darwin,
205-6; Malthus, 340, 348;
theorists, 340.
Suarez, 12, 105, 121, 127-30; in-
terpretation of Genesis, 11,
108, 121-2, 128; origin of spe-
cies, 128; problems of crea-
tion, 128-9.
Successive Creations, 176; Cu-
vier's school, 12, 280-2, 295;
Lucretius, 95-6.
Survival of Fittest, 17, 85-6, 88,
299, 354-5; Anaximander, 48;
antiquity, 5, 65; Aristotle, 10,
73-4, 87; Buffon, 150, 196, 198,
205, 300, 320; de Maupertuis,
150; Diderot, 172-3; E. Dar-
win, 205; Empedocles, 48, 54,
55, 88, 91, 95, 101, 172; Epi-
curus, 95; Geoffroy, 260;
Greek science, 100; Hume,
146; Kant, 150; Lucretius,
95; Treviranus, 320; Wells,
320.
Swammerdam, 131 ; defense of
emboitement, 36.
Sylvius, 354; criticism of Ve-
salius, 34.
Syngenesis, 36.
Taylor, translation of Aristotle,
83.
Teleology, 30, 59; Anaxagoras,
60; Diderot, 173; Greek phase,
44; Kant, 147-8; Lamarck,
235; opposed by de Mauper-
tuis, 170, by Epicurus, 90-1,
by Lucretius, 94. See Design.
Tennyson, poet of evolution, 63,
206.
Teratology, 263; Geoff roy's
studies, 258, 261.
Thales, 10, 15, 17, 41, 43, 45,
350; origin of life, 46, 352.
Theology, influence of Milton,
12, of science, 11; theologians,
103-156; views of creation,
27; vs. science, 11, 107, 108,
118, 121, 122, 130, 196.
Theophrastus, 43; pupil of
Aristotle, 89; works, 89.
Thompson, D'Arcy, Aristotle,
69-70; Greek science, 10; nat-
ural science, 47; volumes, 7,
68.
Thumb, Opposable, Buffon, E.
Darwin, 205, 356; Helvetius,
356.
Tissu Cellulaire. See Cellular
Tissue.
Transformation, 15, 294; Anax-
imander, 49; Bacon, 29; Bon-
nami, 162-3; defined, 23; de
Maillet, 164, 261; Duret, 162;
Geoffroy, 257, 261-2; Herder,
153; in development, 79;
Kircher, 163; speculative evo-
lutionists, 161. See Trans-
formism.
Transformism, Transformisme,
22; Buffon, 176, 259; defined,
23; de Maupertuis, 168; E.
Darwin, 212; Geoffroy, 259.
Transmission of Acquired Char-
acters, 6, 23, 35, 355-6; Aris-
totle, 72-3; Buffon, 200, 201,
240, 244; de Maillet, 161, 167,
224; E. Darwin, 209, 213;
INDEX
397
Greek theory, 224; Lamarck,
6, 224s 229, 2i0, 244, 254, 25!>,
311, 328, 333; Laplace, 224;
Plato, 73; Spencer, 224. See
Lamarckism.
Transmutation, 221; BufiFon,
200; defined, 22; Geoffroy,
257; Goethe, 266; Haldeman,
311; in England, 296; in
France, 294^6, 296; Lamarck,
228, 251, 296; Lyell, 22; Nau-
din, 296; Owen, 318; theory,
284, 316, 331. See Mutability.
Treviranus, 9, 181, 191, 254,
273, 283-91, 303, 353; abio-
genesis, 289-90, 352; basis of
life, 284; compensation of
growth, 286; contribution to
evolution, 283, 284, 288; defi-
nition and use of 'biology,'
65-6, 283, 286; environment,
286-7, 288-9; parallelism of
thought, 6; phylogeny, 287-
8; population, 287; progres-
sive modification, 289, 354;
species, 289, 290-1 ; structure,
286, 289; survival of fittest,
320; variability, variety, 291;
volumes, 283, 284, 289.
Tyndall, discussion with Bas-
tian, 38.
Tj-pe, evolution, 195. See Unity
of Type.
Unger, T., 16, 307.
Uniformitarianism, 179; Avi-
cenna, 115-^; Bruno, 126;
Buffon, 199; Darwin, 330;
Goethe, 268; Lamarck, 230,
237; Lyell, 325; Newton, 146.
Unity of Plan, d'Azyr, 318;
GeoflFroy, 264-5, 318; Owen,
318. See Unity of Type.
Unity of Type, 72, 269; Aris-
totle, 351; Buffon, 194, 195;
E. Darwin, 208; GeofFroy,
258, 351-2; Goethe, 269-70,
272; Herder, 154; Lamarck,
232; Naudin, 29(>-7.
Ur-Srhhim, 50, 61; Oken's the-
ory, 160, 182-4.
Use, Disuse, 239; Darwin, 3t5;
E. Darwin, 328; Lamarck,
233, 239, 241, 328, 341.
Variability, limitation, 294-6;
Treviranus, 291,
Variation, 17, 32; Bacon, 29,
136-7; Brown, 335; BuflFon,
193, 306; central problem in
evolution, 133; Darwin, 334,
342, 343, 347; Kant, 151; La-
marck, 232, 293; Leibnitz,
143; von Buch, 310.
Variety, of species, Treviranus,
291; Wallace, 347.
Varigny, interpretation of Nau-
din, 298.
Vesalius, intermaxillary bone,
34.
Virey, 16, 306.
Vogt, 282.
Voltaire, fossils, 163-4.
Volumes, references, /Eschylus,
63, 71, 97; Anaximander, 47;
Aristotle, 55, 61, 69, 72, 75,
79, 81, 82, 83, 115, 118, 186;
Bacon, 25, 28, 135, 136, 139;
Barenbach, 153; Bible, 63;
Bielschowsky, 267, 276; Bon-
net, 175; Bridges, 234;
Brooks, 56, 73; Bruno, 126;
Buckley, 63; BuflFon, 190,
192, 194, 197; Carus, 268:
Chambers, 305, 306, 312, 313;
Cotterill, 109; Cuvier, 279,
304; Darwin, 211, 295, 296,
312, 318, 320, 323, 324, 332,
334, 336, 338, 339, 341, 342,
344, 345, 348; de Maillet, 163,
165, 166; Deperet, 279, 281;
Descartes, 140; d'Holbach,
170; Diderot, 170; Draper,
115; Driesch, 81; Duret, 162;
E. Darwin, 21, 174, 202, 203,
207, 208, 212, 213, 214, 217,
222, 223, 224, 232, 271, 332;
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 57,
398
INDEX
68, 98, 107, 119, 120, 122, 140-
1, 145, 146, 175; Geoffroy,
258, 259, 269; Goethe, 267,
268, 270, 271, 272, 274; Gutt-
ler, 109; Haeckel, 148, 305,
308, 309; Herder, 153; Her-
schel, 330; Hippocrates, 67;
Humboldt, 330; Judd, 304;
Kant, 147; Kircher, 163;
Krause, 192 ;: Lamarck, 65, 222,
223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228,
229, 230, 232, 233, 235, 238,
239, 240, 241, 242, 247, 249,
255, 268, 271, 312, 313, 341;
Larousse, 22; Lawrence, 66;
Leibnitz, 143 ; Lewes, 77 ; Lin-
naeus, 186; Livingstone (ed.),
98; Lucretius, 40, 53, 58,
92, 93, 95; Lyell, 21, 119,
325, 332; Malthus, 197; Ma-
son (ed.), 218; Matthew, 321;
Mivart, 127; Moore, 110;
Morley, 172; Muller, 271;
Murray, 20, 22; Oken, 160,
180, 181, 182; Osborn, 62, 98,
106, 191, 323, 327, 345, 348;
Owen, 318; Packard, 226;
Pascal, 25; Perrier, 167, 187,
263; Pliny, 98; Polybus, 67;
Robinet, 177, 178, 179; St.
Hilaire, 245, 263, 294; Schel-
ling, 154; Serres, 308; Sing-
er, 66, 68, 114; Spencer, 22;
Taylor, 83 ; Theophrastus,
89; Thompson, 68, 69; Tre-
viranus, 65, 283, 284, 289;
Wagner, 197; Ward, 194;
Zeller, 43, 45.
Von Baer, embryologist, 16, 36,
306; biogenetic law, 36, 308,
319.
Von Buch, 16, 306; Buffonian,
309, 310; geographic distri-
bution and isolation, 309-10;
variation, 310.
Wagner, Moriz, 342; geographic
isolation, 197; theory, 343;
volume, 197.
Wallace, 16, 17, 320, 328; classi-
fication, 322; descent theory,
322; direct observer, 304;
distribution, 322; natural se-
lection (co-discoverer), 6,
345-8; succession of species,
322; survival, 355; varieties,
347.
Wants of Animals, Aristotle,
78, 356; E. Darwin, 209-10,
211, 213; Lamarck, 240-1,
242. See Archaesthetism.
Ward, C. H., on Darwin, 342;
volume, 194.
Wells, 16, 340; natural selec-
tion, 306, 320-1; survival of
fittest, 320, 355.
V/iliiam of Occam, abiogenesis,
106.
WolflF, 16; transmutation, 307.
Wotton, systematist, 185.
Xenophanes, 15, 43, 50-1; cau-
sation, 50; origin of life, 50-1,
of man, 50-1; study of fos-
sils, 50.
Zeller, interpretations of Anax-
agoras, 60-1, of Democritus,
58, of Empedocles, 55, of
Epicurus, 90, of Lucretius,
93, 94; Greek studies, 41,
44, 45; volume, 43.
Zoology, 26, 221; Lamarck's
studies, 226, 227.
/Si.
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