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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



enced Emerson's thought in regard to evolu- 



tion. Saint-Hilaire gave the coup de grdce to 

 Cuvier's fight against evolution. Oken is 

 one of the great pioneers of evolution. 

 Goethe shares with Empedoeles, Lucretius, 

 and Erasmus Darwin the great honor of be- 

 ing a poet of evolution. Of the four, Goethe 

 was by all odds the greatest. To him, the 

 doctrine of evolution was of more importance 

 than the downfall of a despot. The eve of 

 the Revolution of 1830 found him watching 

 over the dispute between Cuvier and Saint- 

 Hilaire with an interest that obscured every 

 other. 



" ' Well,' remarked Goethe to Soret " 

 (Conversations with Eckermann) " ' what do 

 you think of this great event ? The volcano 

 has burst forth, all in flames, and there are no 

 more negotiations behind closed doors.' ' A 

 dreadful affair,' I answered, ' but what else 

 could be expected under the circumstances, 

 and with such a ministry, except that it would 

 end in the expulsion of the present royal 

 family ? ' ' We do not seem to understand 

 each other, my dear friend,' replied Goethe. 

 ' I am not speaking of those people at all ; 

 I am interested in something very different. 

 I mean the dispute between Cuvier and 

 Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, which has broken 

 out in the Academy, and which is of such 

 great importance to science.' This remark 

 of Goethe's came upon me so unexpectedly 

 that I did not know what to say, and my 

 thoughts for some minutes seemed to have 

 come to a complete standstill. ' The affair 

 is of the utmost importance,' he continued, 

 ' and you can not form any idea of what I 

 felt on receiving the news of the meeting on 

 the 19th. In Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire we 

 have now a mighty ally for a long time to 

 come. But I see also how great the sym- 

 pathy of the French scientific world must be 

 in this affair, for, in spite of a terrible politi- 

 cal excitement, the meeting on the 19th was 

 attended by a full house. The best of it is, 

 however, that the synthetic treatment of Na- 

 ture introduced into France by Geoffroy Saint- 

 Hilaire can now no longer be stopped. This 

 matter has now become public through the 

 discussion in the Academy carried on in 

 the presence of a large audience ; it can 

 no longer be referred to secret committees 

 or be settled or suppressed behind closed 

 doors." ' 



It is obvious to any reader of Emerson's 

 essays that Goethe exercised an enormous in- 

 fluence over him, and that Emerson was much 

 more in sympathy with Goethe than was the 

 fetichistic dualist Carlyle. This influence of 

 Goethe over Emerson's views of evolution is 

 clearly evident in the citation already made. 



The evolutionary views of Emerson ap- 



pear so frequently in his essays that it is as- 

 tonishing that he should have been misun- 

 derstood. The citation by the Minneapolis 

 clergyman from the essay on Nature that 

 •' man is fallen " does not refer to the 

 Adamic fall, but the degenerating influence 

 of cities. At the slightest glance, the evolu- 

 tionary tendency of this essay on Nature 

 is evident. In the paragraph immediately 

 after that containing the reference to fallen 

 man occurs the following : 



" But taking timely warning and leaving 

 many things unsaid on this topic, let us not 

 longer omit our homage to the efficient Na- 

 ture, natura naturans, the quick cause before 

 which all forms flee as the driven snows, it- 

 self secret, its works driven before it in 

 flocks and multitudes (as the ancient repre- 

 sented Nature by Proteus, a shepherd), and in 

 indescribable variety. It published itself in 

 creatures reaching from particles and spicula 

 through transformation on transformation to 

 the highest symmetries, arriving at consum- 

 mate results without a shock or a leap. A little 

 heat, that is a little motion, is all that differ- 

 ences the bald dazzling white and deadly 

 cold poles of the earth from the prolific trop- 

 ical climates. All changes pass without vio- 

 lence by reason of the two cardinal conditions 

 of boundless space and boundless time. Geol- 

 ogy has initiated us into the secularity of Na- 

 ture and taught us to disuse our school-dame 

 measure and exchange our Mosaic and Ptole- 

 maic scheme for her large style. We knew 

 nothing rightly for want of perspective. Now 

 we learn what patient ages must round them- 

 selves before the rock is broken and the first 

 lichen race has disintegrated the thinnest ex- 

 ternal plate into soil and opened the door for 

 the remote flora, fauna, Ceres and Pomona to 

 come in. How far off yet is the trilobite, 

 how far the quadruped, how inconceivably 

 remote is man ! All duly arrive, and then 

 race after race of men. It is a long way 

 from granite to the oyster ; farther yet to 

 Plato and the preaching of the immortality 

 of the soul. Yet all must come, as surely as 

 the first atom has two sides." 



It would be useless to multiply citations 

 along this line to demonstrate not only that 

 Emerson was an evolutionist, but that his 

 whole philosophy was pervaded by the doc- 

 trine. It should be remembered that, at the 

 time Emerson wrote, evolution had won wide 

 favor among thinkers and that the success of 

 the Origin of Species was an evidence, not 

 of the creation of the evolution sentiment by 

 that work, but of a pre-existing mental cur- 

 rent in favor of evolution. 

 Very respectfully, 



Harriet C. B. Alexander. 



Chicago, December 20, 1808. 



