CHAPTER IV 



THE TRIUMPH OF CATASTROPHISM OVER 



EVOLUTION 



THERE is no fact in the history of science which is 

 more certain than that those great pioneers of Evo- 

 lution in the Inorganic world Generelli, Desmarest 

 and Button utterly failed to recommend their 

 doctrines to general acceptance ; and that, at the 

 beginning of last century, everything in the nature of 

 evolutionary ideas was almost universally discredited 

 alike by men of science and the world at large. 



The causes of the neglect and opprobrium which 

 befel all evolutionary teachings are not difficult to 

 discover. The old Greek philosophers saw no more 

 reason to doubt the possibility of creation by evolu- 

 tion, than by direct mechanical means. But, on the 

 revival of learning in Europe, evolution was at once 

 confronted by the cosmogonies of Jewish and Arabian 

 writers, which were incorporated in sacred books ; and 

 not only were the ideas of the sudden making and 

 destruction of the world and all things in it regarded 



