214 LAMARCK AND DARWIN 



something may be accomplished by the aid of the principle 

 of the mechanism of Nature (without which there can be no 

 natural science in general). This analogy of forms, which 

 with all their differences seem to have been produced 

 according to a common original type, strengthens our 

 suspicions of an actual relationship between them in their 

 production from a common parent, through the gradual 

 approximation of one animal-genus to another from those 

 in which the principle of purposes seems to be best 

 authenticated, i.e., from man down to the polype, and 

 again from this down to mosses and lichens, and finally 

 to the lowest stage of Nature noticeable by us, viz., to crude 

 matter." 1 



So, too, Buffon's evolutionism was suggested by his 

 study of the structural affinities of animals, and Erasmus 

 Darwin in his Zoononria (1794) brought forward as one of 

 the strongest proofs of evolution, " the essential unity of 

 plan in all warm-blooded animals."' 2 



But, as a matter of historical fact, no morphologist, not 

 even Geoffrey, deduced from the facts .of his science any- 

 comprehensive theory of evolution. The pre-Darwinian 

 morphologists were comparatively little influenced by the 

 evolution-theories current in their day, and it was in the 

 anatomist Cuvier and the embryologist von Baer that 

 the early evolutionists found their most uncompromising- 

 opponents. 



Speaking generally, and excepting for the moment the 

 theory of .Lamarck, we may say that the evolution-theories 

 of the iSth and ipth centuries arose in connection with the 

 transcendental notion of the Eclicllc tics circs, or scale of 

 perfection. This notion, which plays so great a part in the 

 philosophy of Leibniz, was very generally accepted about the 

 middle of the i8th century, and received complete and even 

 exaggerated expression from Bonnet and Robinct. Buffon 

 also was influenced by it. Towards the beginning of the 

 iQth century the idea was taken up eager!}' by the trans- 

 cendental school and by them given, in their theories of the 



1 Eng. Trans, by J. II. Hcrnard, p. 337, London, 1892. 

 ' II. F. Osborn, From the Greeks to Daru-in, p. 145, New York and 

 London, 1894. 



