‘THE HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE
EVOLUTIONARY IDEA

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FROM THE SMITHSONIAN REPORT FOR 1921, PAGES 325-334

(PUBLICATION 2687)

WASHINGTON
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
1928

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THE HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE
EVOLUTIONARY IDEA

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BY

BRANISLAV PETRONIEVICS

FROM THE SMITHSONIAN REPORT FOR 1921, PAGES 325-334

(PUBLICATION 2687)

WASHINGTON
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
1923

THE HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE EVOLUTION-
ARY IDEA.

By BRANISLAV PETRONIEVICS.

This historical outline must be very short, and I will only indicate
in a few words the main features of the doctrines of evolution held
by different thinkers. I am making this outline particularly because
I wish to enable my readers to avoid the mistakes which are so often
found in even the best known works on this subject. These books
have been written either by philosophers who were not always in a
position to really understand the meaning of the scientific doctrines
of evolution, or by scientists who, on their part, were unable to thor-
oughly grasp the meaning of the corresponding ideas of the philoso-
phers.

In order to make perfectly clear the simple meanings of the differ-
ent theories about the origin of the world and of things in it, I must
first briefly state the principal hypotheses about this origin which
are considered tenable. There are four of them. The first is the
hypothesis of the eternality of things, according to which the inor-
ganic world is eternal and the organic species also eternal and un-
changeable (the metaphysical systems of Aristotle and of Spinoza
are the representative types of this hypothesis).

The second is that hypothesis of creation which conceives that
the inorganic world as well as the organic species were created by
God, but, once created, remain unchangeable (this is the orthodox
hypothesis of the Church, and the naturalists. Cuvier and Agassiz
are the best known sponsors of it).

The third hypothesis is that of spontaneous general creation;
namely, that the inorganic world was produced out of sheer nothing-
ness and that organized beings were immediately formed out of a
transformation of inorganic matter. (The doctrine of Buddha is
the only representative of this hypothesis concerning the origin of
the inorganic world, while there are several Greek philosophers—
Anaximander, Empedocles, Epicurus—who teach the spontaneous
generation of all organic beings, however complex.)

+Translated by permission from “ L’Evolution Universelle,”’ by Branislay Petronievics,
of which it forms the first chapter. Librairie Félix Alcan, Paris, 1921.
101257—23 22 325

326 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1921.

Lastly, the fourth hypothesis is that of evolution, according to
which the inorganic world as it exists to-day comes from a primordial
state quite different from its present condition, and the organic
species have been developed by a gradual transformation from in-
ferior to superior species. (Among scientists, Laplace is the best
known representative of the theory of the evolution of the inorganic
world, Lamarck and Darwin, of the evolution of the organic world;
among philosophers, Kant is the most noted representative of the
doctrine of inorganic world evolution, and Spencer, Hartman, and
Bergson of the idea of the evolution of the organic world.)

In order to make these four hypotheses more easily understood, I
am placing them in a diagram which will show plainly their mutual
relationships.

Diagram.
A. Things have no origin.......-...- I. Hypothesis of eternity.
Eternal and unchanging
things.

II. Hypothesis of creation.

1. By @ supernat- Things created, but ever\(a) Unchanging

ural agency.

unchanging. things.
B. Things have III. Hypothesis of spontaneous
an origin. general ore Hen. ae
: are a result of a sudden
2. Bye a natural transformation.
oe IV. Hypothesis of evolution. (b) Changin
Things are a result of ae ae
eradual development. 2

Before going further, let me name four standard works which may
be consulted for more detailed study:

1. The important article of the celebrated historian of Greek
philosophy, Ed Zeller, “ Uber die griechischen Vorginger Darwin’s,”
which was published in Abhandlungen der Berliner Akademie, 1878.

9. The work of the American paleontologist, H. F. Osborn, “ From
the Greeks to Darwin, An Outline of the Development of the Evolu-
tion Idea,” 1894.

3. “La philosophie zoologique avant Darwin,” 1885, by Edmond
Perrier.

4. The excellent article, “ Evolution,’ which appeared in the last
edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Among the different philosophical systems of India, only three de-
serve mention here. There is first, orthodox Brahminism, which pre-
sents the idea of emanation, by which is meant the eternality of
things; then we find the system of Sankya, which combines emana-
tion with a mechanical and evolutionistic explanation of the world;
and lastly, there is the system of Buddha which is the philosophy of
the spontaneous generation of the world.

Among the Greeks the germs of the evolutionistic idea are found
even in the early speculations about the cosmos put forth by Hesiod

HISTORY OF EVOLUTION—PETRONIEVICS. 327

and the Orphics. But Thales is the first who clearly conceives the
natural origin of the world when he teaches the existence of a
primordial material from which everything is derived. His disciple,
Anaximander, goes much further; he is the first declared exponent of
the evolutionistic idea; he teaches the gradual development of the
world from an unknown material, and a regular succession of periods
of the evolution and dissolution of the universe. He also teaches the
evolution of the earth, and he supposes a spontaneous generation of
organisms in the water (men, themselves, first appeared in the form
of fishes). Anaximenes and Diogenes of Appolonia also admit the
successive periods of the evolution and dissolution of the universe;
while the doctrine of Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, although
insufficiently known, seems to be that of the eternality of the world.
Heraclitus adds to the idea of successive periods of evolution and dis-
solution of the universe, his doctrine of perpetual change. But it is in
the doctrine of Empedocles that the evolutionistic idea reaches its
height among the pre-Socratic philosophers. Being himself a sup-
porter of the idea of successive periods of evolution and dissolution
of the universe, he also conceives this world evolution process as going
on in a mechanically causal way and he explains this as the inter-
action of the four elements and the two forces which unite and
separate them. According to his belief, also, organisms arise from a
process of spontaneous generation, but he held that it is never com-
plete organisms which are formed, but only parts of organisms, called
organs. When they unite, these parts at first form organic combi-
nations incapable of living and propagating themselves, and it is
only after a series of successive creations of this kind that organisms
finally appear which are capable of self subsistence. The founders
of atomism, Leucippas and Democrites, took over the essential
features of Empedocles’ doctrine, and perfected the mechanical side
of it by their doctrine of atoms.

Finally, Anaxagoras, the last of the pre-Socratic philosophers, is
the only one of these, who, while admitting an infinite number of ele-
ments all different in quality, also supposes chaos as the initial state
of the world, and that this world developed itself out of chaos when it
received from God the first impulsion. Anaxagoras is also the first
who teaches the peculiar doctrine of the eternality of organic germs.

The teachings of Plato concerning the world and organic species,
which he conceives clearly for the first time by means of his doctrine
of ideas, is very little understood on account of the allegorical form
which Plato generally gave to all his doctrines, and especially to his
theory of the creation of the world in his “Timeon.” But it seems to
me that the true Platonic doctrine is a system of emanation, in which
God and pure nothingness (identical with empty space and matter)
are the two opposite poles,

328 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1921.

Aristotle’s system is the type of an antievolutionistic one. The inor-
ganic world is eternal, eternally expressing the corresponding thought
of the Divine Being. Although the founder of biology taught that all
organized beings form a continuous ladder of degrees of perfection
(from the most primitive plants to man, the most perfect animal) he
conceives this ladder in a purely static manner, since the organized
species were, to him, eternal and unchanging. But, on the other side,
he admits spontaneous generation, even for organized beings rela-
tively complex. A similar gradation in the domain of the mind is
taught by Aristotle.

In post-Aristotelian philosophy Epicurus and his disciple, the
Roman poet Lucretius, especially merit our attention. In teaching the
infinity of space and of the number of atoms, Epicurus and Lucretius
expressly announce that the evolutionary process of worlds has a
definite beginning in time. According to them, there does not exist an
evolutionary process of the entire universe, but only evolutionary
processes in special worlds, separated in the great infinity of space.
‘They conceive these evolutionary processes as taking place in a purely
mechanical way, and they try to give, for the first time, a rational
explanation of the evolutionary processes of the worlds. They also
teach the evolution of the earth. Furthermore, in taking up Em-
pedocles’ evolutionary doctrine with regard to the organic world,
Lucretius improves considerably upon this theory by teaching the
spontaneous generation of entire organisms which appear in a series
of beings more and more perfect. But that which most arouses our
admiration for the Roman poet and makes the reading of the fifth
book of his poem so extremely interesting is his theory of the evolu-
tion of the human race, of the human mind, of human society. We
feel that we are here almost in the presence of a modern scientist.

Compared with Epicurus and Lucretius, the Stoics are almost re-
actionaries. They admit, according to Heraclitus, a periodic suc-
cession of universes, and they teach—this is their original theory—
the eternality of the germs of things which develop in each universe.

‘The doctrine of the Neo-Platenists, Plotinus and Proclus, is the
theory of the eternality of the world, which came forth by a process
of emanation out of the supreme being, the pure oneness.

In the middle ages, we find in St. Augustine an allegorical inter-
preter of the origin of things; St. Augustine supposes that inor-
ganic matter was created by God and given the power of self-
development through its own efforts to an ordered inorganic world.
He teaches in addition the eternality of the organic germs created by
God. St. Thomas Aquinas accepts the doctrine of St. Augustine,
although in a manner somewhat disguised.

Among the Arabian philosophers, Avicennus is devoted to the
Neo-Platonic doctrine of emanation; he especially teaches, however,

HISTORY OF EVOLUTION——-PETRONIEVICS. 329

the slow evolution of the surface of the earth. Averroés is an inter-
preter of Aristotle in evolutionistic sense. But, in general, the Ara-
bian philosophers and naturalists are faithful disciples of Aristotle.

During the Renaissance, Giordano Bruno, although quite modern
in his theory of the infinitude of the universe, does not declare him-
self clearly upon the question of an evolution in the universe. He
teaches the evolution of the earth’s surface, but he stands with
Aristotle in regard to the organic world. The Jesuit, Father Suarez,
is the first man who set forth in a perfectly clear manner, the doc-
trine of the special creation of organic species, a theory which will
play an important part in the discussion of modern naturalists.

Among modern philosophers, Francis Bacon is the first to put
forth the question of the possibility of a transformation in the vari-
ous species, without in any way admitting sympathy with the idea
of transformationism. Descartes teaches the evolution of the inor-
ganic world (the steller system, the solar system, the earth), but
he quite neglects the question of an evolution in the organic world.

G. W. Leibnitz is interesting on account of several of his doctrines.
He formulated these:—1. The famous principle of continuity, which
he defines in regard to the organic world in the following terms:
“The different species of animals are all parts of a single chain
whose links are so intimately fastened together that it can not be
determined, either by observation or by imagination where one link
ends and the next begins”; 2. Leibnitz teaches the eternality of
organic germs; 3. He formulates the principle of an immanent evo-
lution of the mind (from the monad); 4. He expresses hypotheti-
cally the principle of a world evolution, when he says in a passage
in his “ Theodicée,” that it might be true, that the universe was ever
progressing from good to better. In opposition to Leibnitz, the
metaphysical system of Spinoza, like that of Aristotle, is the type
of an antievolutionistic system, the material world and the spiritual
world being both, according to Spinoza, the two eternal attributes
of the divine substance.

Among the philosophers of the English empirical school we must
first mention David Hume, who admits the possibility and even the
probability of the doctrine of evolution in opposition to that of
creation. But Erasmus Darwin, the English naturalist, goes even
further than Hume; he openly takes up the theory of organic
transformation and he sets forth an elaborate system of ingenious
explanations. A little before him, the celebrated English geologist,
James Hutton, had developed for the first time the doctrine of the
slow and uniform evolution of the earth’s surface.

Kant, the great creator of critical philosophy, engages our atten-
tion by several of his doctrines. To begin with, he tried to develop

3380 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1921.

for the first time in a scientific or at least partly scientific manner
the doctrine of the evolution of the stellar system and, before
Laplace, that also of the solar system. Then he went on to discuss
the doctrine of organic evolution; but, not being able to overcome
the difficulty of explaining this evolution through mechanical causes,
he declared himself against it. He admitted, nevertheless, and de-
fended the social and intellectual evolution of humanity.

Herder, a contemporary of Kant, is an even stronger supporter
of the idea of evolution, although he recognizes the possibility of
the intellectual and social evolution only. But even before Herder
the idea of evolution and of progress had been introduced into
history by the Italian, Vico, in his famous work, “ Principii di
Sciencia Nuova,” 1725.

In contrast to the majority of German and English thinkers, we
find in France, in the eighteenth century, many philosophers and
scientists who are more or less devoted to the idea of organic evo-
lution. The celebrated astronomer and mathematician, P. L. M. de
Maupertuis, is the first among modern thinkers who, in his article,
“ Systéme de la nature: Essai sur la formation des Corps Organisés,”
1751, came out as a definite supporter of the doctrine of transforma-
tion, while he at the same time set forth the hypothesis of organic
particles and of the spontaneous generation of organic life. D.
Diderot follows the doctrine of Maupertuis, but he links it with
the theory of organic germs and with Empedocles’ teaching about
imperfect organisms. However, Diderot is of some interest on
account of his doctrine of social evolution. B. de Maillet teaches
the metamorphosis of aquatic animals into terrestrial ones; but
according to him aquatic animals come from indestructible germs.
He also speaks of the slow evolution of the earth’s surface, and
because of this doctrine he is, like Hutton in England, a precursor
of Lyell.

Ch. Bonnet is an antievolutionist. While admitting the principle
of continuity held by Leibnitz he deduces from it his famous “ ladder
of beings.” He teaches the eternality of organic germs which de-
velop into complete organisms; each germ is merely the organism in
miniature which grows only as it develops itself. (This is the
theory of evolution held by Bonnet in contrast to the “theory of
epigenesis.”) Bonnet, in opposition to de Maillet, is also a supporter
of the theory of cataclysms in the history of the earth.

I. B. Robinet admits, as Bonnet does, the Leibnitzian principle
of continuity and widens its scope by formulating a “ladder of
beings ” which includes both inorganic and organic things. He also
teaches the eternality of organic germs, but he opposes the theory
of cataclysms.

HISTORY OF EVOLUTION—-PETRONIEVICS. 331

Buffon begins by being an adherent of the idea of fixity of species;
but later, he has a partial glimpse of their transmutability. The
great Swedish naturalist Linnaeus formulates, on the contrary, the
theory of the fixity of species, teaching that there are “as many
species as there came couples from the hands of the Creator ”.

But it was in France at the end of the eighteenth century that
the. doctrine of inorganic evolution was elaborated for the first
time in a scientific manner by the mathematician and astronomer
Laplace; he, however, limited his doctrine to the solar system (in
a note to his work, “ Exposition du systéme du monde,” 1796).

The French thinkers of the eighteenth century, Turgot and
Condorcet, also hold an important place in the development of the
theory of social evolution.

The great German philosophers of the commencement and of the
first half of the nineteenth century were in general opponents of
evolutionism. Schelling’s philosophy of identity supposes in nature
a series of gradations beginning in inorganic forces passing through
organic beings, and finishing in self-conscious mind. But these
gradations, according to him, are all in existence simultaneously.
Hegal admits Schelling’s antievolutionistic point of view as to
nature (the inorganic and organic world)—nature being, according
to his idea, the externalization of the idea, the essence of which is
only a purely logical process of conceptual evolution. But in the
domain of mind, Hegel expressly recognizes temporal evolution,
and he is one of the most important proponents of the intellectual
and social evolution. (His work “ Philosophie der Geschichte ” is a
work which marks a date in the history of this evolution.) Schopen-
hauer is still more reactionary than Hegel; he declares himself a
resolute opponent of evolution in the domain of nature (where he
recognizes only degrees of objectivation of the will) as in those of
the mind and of history. He also admits in geology the theory of
revolutions.

Among the disciples of Schelling, on the contrary, some are
declared sympathizers with the doctrine of organic transformation.
First, Oken, who advances the theory of cells by his doctrine of
infusorian spheres (these becoming animals in the water and plants
in the air); these spheres, according to Oken, being the immediate
productoftheprimitivejelly. Immediately afterhim came Tréviranus
who, even before Oken and at the same time as Lamarck in France,
had developed the doctrine of organic transformation (in his work,
“Biologie oder Philosophie der lebenden Natur,” 6 Bde, 1802-1822).
Oken and Tréviranus were as distinguished naturalists as philos-
ophers, and they are the only philosophers who, as original thinkers,
clearly conceived and maintained the doctrine of organic evolution.

Boe ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1921.

Goethe, the great poet, was never a declared advocate of organic
transformation, although he discussed it during his last years under
the influence of the French transformationists. E. von Baer, the
celebrated founder of embryology, became, especially after Darwin, a
convinced transformationist; indeed he came very near recognizing
evolution as a universal process.

At the beginning and in the first half of the nineteenth century,
the doctrine of organic evolution was developed by the scientists in
France in a manner much more definite than in Germany. It is
especially Lamarck who contributed the most to this development
in his “ Philosophie zoologique,” 1809, and in some earlier essays (the
first one is dated 1801). Discussing the idea of species, Lamarck
directs special attention to the artificial nature of this idea; to the
numerous transitions fromm one species to another; to the fact of
varieties and the connection of these varieties with different external
circumstances; to the short duration of the life of existent species so
far as we can establish the stability of these species. These are the
principal arguments which he presents in favor of transmutability of
species. While insisting upon the slow but continuous evolution of
the earth’s surface, he gains a partial idea of the direct connection
which exists between this evolution and that of the organic world.
But it is especially in the exposition of the causes of organic evolu-
tion that the work of Lamarck presents an extraordinary originality ;
a part of his work which we can not discuss here.

Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire united with his theory of the unity of
plan, the doctrine of organic transformism, attributing the cause of
these transformations to the ambient world.

But while Lamarck and Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire represent the doc-
trine of transformism, the opposing doctrine, that of the creation of
species, has nowhere found advocates more enthusiastic and distin-
guished than Cuvier and Agassiz.

When once this last doctrine had been expressly introduced into
natural history by the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus, Cuvier set him-
self to demonstrate it by observed facts. In linking the doctrine of
fixity of species to that of the successive revolutions of the globe, he
taught a series of successive creations of species; but, according to
him, some of these species are not exterminated by the revolutions,
and there have always been migrations of some species that survived.
Above all, Agassiz became the typical advocate of the creation
theory, teaching that God produced, in different geological periods,
organic species more and more perfect, which, once created, remained
unchanged.

Auguste Comte, founder of the positivist philosophy, although a
resolute advocate of the intellectual and social evolution—especially

HISTORY OF EVOLUTION—PETRONIEVICS. 333

evidenced in his celebrated law of three stages—also remained a
declared opponent of organic transformation.

Finally, at the beginning of the second half of the nineteenth
century, Darwin succeeded in definitely establishing the doctrine of
organic transformation in his celebrated work, “Origin of Species,”
1859. The arguments brought forward by Darwin in support of
this doctrine are so numerous and for the most part so original that
they place this scientist quite above Lamarck, and it is not at all
astonishing to see that the doctrine of transformation was adopted
by the scientific world only after his vigorous and decisive arguments
were published. Just as remarkable as this reasoning is the theory
of natural selection which Darwin proposed (at the same time as
Wallace) to support his theory of the evolution of the organic world;
but upon this point the principle of Lamarck is perhaps of equal
importance with that of Darwin. Darwin also holds an important
place in the development of the theory of intellectual and social
evolution through his work on the origin of man, “The Descent of
Man? 18 (1.

Before Darwin, the great English geologist, Lyell, definitely
destroyed the theory of cataclysms in geology and introduced instead
the theory of slow and continuous changes due to agents still in action
to-day at the surface of the earth. But after the triumph of the
Darwinian theory of transformation, the idea of evolution was defi-
nitely adopted by geologists in a more precise sense than that of
Lyell.

It was only when the doctrine of organic transformation was
proposed and elaborated by Lamarck and Darwin that the philoso-
phers began to glimpse the universal importance of the principle of
evolution. Herbert Spencer was the first to grasp this importance,
and while giving the formula of a general law of evolution. he
applied this formula to the entire field of empirical reality, and even
to the totality of things in the universe, but he never tried to ex-
amine the conditions necessary to a total evolution of the world.

Kd. Hartmann was the first among speculative philosophers to set
forth clearly, in his celebrated “ Philosophie des Unbewussten,” 1869,
the problem of the world evolution, and while determining some of
the essential conditions of that evolution, to try to give for the first
time a positive solution of this problem.

Finally, H. Bergson, in “L’Evolution Créatrice,” 1907, tried to
state the principle of world evolution as identical with that of or-
ganic evolution, and with the actual duration of psychic time. Thus
Bergson’s doctrine is an example of a phenomenon which is not at all
rare in the history of general ideas, a universal truth which has been
found and elaborated according to scientific research (Laplace, La-

334 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1921.

marck, Lyell, and Darwin are the four greatest scientists who devoted
themselves to this research) ends by being proclaimed by a philoso-
pher as, so to speak, a logical necessity.

As the present short outline of the historical development of the
idea of evolution shows, this idea has been established much more
by scientific research than by philosophic speculation. And while
the inorganic evolution was recognized by some of the Greek
philosophers and by Descartes and Kant, the idea of organic evolu-
tion was never an integral part of any of the great systems of
philosophy, and no great philosopher before Darwin had recognized
the general and universal bearing of the idea of evolution. It is a
rather extraordinary fact that an idea of an eminently philosophic
importance, such as the idea of universal evolution, should never have
been recognized as such until after science had demonstrated it—
this is a bit humiliating to philosophers; and it shows us that human
knowledge, if it wishes to attain its total unity, must find its support
and its inspiration as much in scientific research as in pure specula-
tion.

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