414 THE STUDY OF ANIMAL LIFE CHAP. 



has from the beginning of its existence protected and preserved 

 each particular race. And there are many things which, recom- 

 mended to us by their useful services, continue to exist consigned 

 to our protection. 



" Tn the first place, the first breed of lions and the savage races 

 their courage has protected, foxes their craft, and stags their 

 proneness to flight. But light-sleeping dogs with faithful heart 

 in breast, and every kind which is born of the seed of beasts of 

 burden, and at the same time the woolly flocks and the horned 

 herds, are all consigned to the protection of man. For they have 

 ever fled with eagerness from wild beasts, and have ensued peace, 

 and plenty of food obtained without their own labour, as we give 

 it in requital of their useful services. But those to whom nature 

 has granted none of these qualities, so that they could neither live 

 by their own means nor perform for us any useful service, in return 

 for which we should suffer their kind to feed and be safe under our 

 protection, those, you are to know, would lie exposed as a prey and 

 booty of others, hampered all in their own death-bringing shackles, 

 until nature brought that kind to utter destruction." 



4. Evolutionists before Darwin. We must guard against 

 supposing that the works of Buffon, or Lamarck, or 

 Darwin were inexplicable creations of genius, or that 

 they came like cataclysms, without warning, to shatter 

 the conventional traditions of their time. For all great 

 workers have their forerunners, who prepare their paths. 

 The evolution of theories of evolution is bound up 

 with the whole progress of the world. Therefore the 

 student who would understand the development of 

 the modern conception of organic evolution will have 

 to take account of social changes, such as the collapse 

 of the feudal system, the crusades, the invention of 

 printing, the discovery of America, the French Revolu- 

 tion, the beginning of the steam age ; of theological and 

 religious movements, such as the Protestant Reforma- 

 tion and the spread of Deism ; of a long series of evolu- 

 tionist philosophers, some of whom were at the same 

 time students of the physical sciences notably Des- 

 cartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Herder, Kant, and Schelling ; 

 of the acceptance of evolutionary conceptions in regard 

 to other orders of facts, especially in regard to the earth 

 and the solar system ; and, finally, of those few natural- 

 ists, like De Maillet and Robinet, who, before Buffon's day, 

 whispered evolutionist heresies. The history of an idea, 



