FOE DARWIN 369 



I ascribe no intention to God, for I mistrust the feeble powers of my 

 reason. I observe facts merely and go on. I can not make nature an 

 intelligent- being who does nothing in vain, who acts by the shortest mode, who 

 does all for the best. 



Thus arose in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the dogma 

 of the fixity of species — a dogma based, it is true, on a direct appeal 

 to fact as well as to conscience. But this dogma contained the germ 

 of its own undoing, in so far as it appealed for its support to observa- 

 tions that every man might make for himself. Yet so influential were 

 its advocates, so convinced of its truth, that more than one assault was 

 made before it crumbled away. 



It is no small pleasure to repeat to-day the names of those bold and 

 original thinkers, who braved the displeasure of their compatriots and 

 the contempt of their times, who brought forward evidence and argu- 

 ment to disprove the teaching of the schools. Their work, it is true, 

 failed in the sense that it received no suflicient meed of praise or word 

 of commendation, but who will deny that a seed was sown that in time 

 bore fruit? Foremost, I think, ranks the great Lamarck, the cente- 

 nary of whose " Philosophic Zoologique " is celebrated this year in 

 France — a bold spirit, whose ideas, based on a wide familiarity with 

 facts, live and bear fruit to-day. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, advanced 

 thinker and philosopher of nature, opponent of the great anatomist 

 Cuvier, brought the problem of evolution to the bar of judgment, losing 

 the decision, it is true, but his ideas a later generation hold in high 

 esteem. Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of our Darwin, author of " The 

 Zoonomia," celebrated in verse " The Botanic Garden " and the " Loves 

 of the Plants," and even before Lamarck, advocated the principle of 

 evolution and the thory of inheritance of acquired characters. Her- 

 bert Spencer, adopting the idea of evolution, laid thereon the elaborate 

 superstructure of his philosophy. Robert Chambers, too, kept alive the 

 central idea of change in the organic world in his " Vestiges of Crea- 

 tion." Others there were, besides, in different lands, but these especially 

 were nearer to Darwin and his times. 



We come now to the years between 1837 and 1844, when Darwin 

 was making his memorable notes on the relation between varieties and 

 species. Eeading through his letters of this period one is surprised 

 to find how little he was impressed by the history of zoology and the 

 influences of his own time, and how much he based his conclusions on 

 the results of his own close observations, his accumulation of data, and 

 careful consideration of facts. In regard to Lamarck, Darwin states 

 in his autobiography, that in 1835 when he was at Edinburgh Uni- 

 versity, Dr. Grant " burst forth in high admiration of Lamarck and his 

 views on evolution. I listened in silent astonishment, and as far as I 

 can judge, without any effect on my mind." 



In later years, after reading Lamarck, Darwin wrote Lyell, in 1859 : 



