CHAPTER XXI 



THE EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION THEORIES 



1. Early Greek philosophers 2. Aristotle 3. Lucretius 4. Evolu- 

 tionists before Darwin 5. Three old masters : Buffon, Erasmus 

 Darwin, Lamarck 6. Charles Darwin 7. Darwin's fellow- 

 workers 8. Steps of progress since Darwin's day and summary 

 of evolution theories. 



THE conception of evolution is no modern idea, it is the 

 human idea of history expanded to cover the whole 

 world. The extension of the idea was gradual, as men felt 

 the need of extending it ; and we sometimes find the 

 same man believing in the eternal permanence of one 

 set of phenomena, in the creation of others, in the evolu- 

 tion of others. Thus he may maintain that human 

 institutions have been evolved ; that man was created ; 

 and that life is eternal. Or another may maintain that 

 matter and motion are eternal ; that life was created ; and 

 that the rest has been evolved. 



1. Early Greek Philosophers. Though Zeller has 

 written on the " Grecian predecessors of Darwin," most of 

 the wise men of Greece before Aristotle were philosophers, 

 not naturalists, and we are apt to read modern ideas 

 into their words. They thought, indeed, as we are think- 

 ing, about the visible universe, and some of them believed 

 it to be, as we do, the result of a process ; but here in 

 most cases ends the resemblance between their thought 

 and ours. 



Thus when Anaximander spoke of a fish-like stage in 

 the past history of man, this was no prophecy of the 

 modern idea that a fish-like form was one of the far-off 

 ancestors of backboned animals ; it was only a fancy 



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