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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



On the Continent of Europe, it is true, some 

 bold speculators, such as Goethe, Oken, Lamarck, 

 and Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, had in the end of the 

 last and commencement of this century broached 

 the doctrine that there is in living beings a con- 

 tinuous series of gradations as well as a consist- 

 ent and general plan of organization ; and that 

 the creation, therefore, or origin of the different 

 forms of plants and animals must have been the 

 result of a gradual process of development or of 

 derivation one from another, the whole standing 

 connected together in certain causal relations. 

 But in Britain such views, though known and 

 not altogether repulsive to a few, obtained little 

 favor, and, by some strange process of reasoning, 

 were looked upon by the great majority as little 

 short of impious questionings of the supreme 

 power of the Almighty. 



How different is the position of matters in 

 this respect in our day ! — when the cautious natu- 

 ralist receives and adopts with the greatest re- 

 serve the statement of fixed and permanent spe- 

 cific characters as belonging to the different forms 

 of organized beings, and is fully persuaded of the 

 constant tendency to variation which all species 

 show even in the present condition of the earth, 

 and of the still greater liability to change which 

 must have existed in the earlier period of its 

 formation — when the belief prevails that so far 

 from being the direct product of distinct acts of 

 creation, the various forms of plants and animals 

 have been gradually evolved in a slow gradation 

 of increasing complexity ; and when it is recog- 

 nized by a large majority of naturalists that the 

 explanation of this wonderful relation of connec- 

 tion between previously-existing and later forms 

 is to be found in the constant tendency to varia- 

 tion during development and growth, and the 

 perpetuation of such variations by hereditary 

 transmission through successive generations in 

 the long but incalculable lapse of the earth's nat- 

 ural mutations. These, as you must all be aware, 

 are in their essential features the views now 

 known as Darwinism, which were first simultane- 

 ously brought forward by Wallace and Darwin in 

 1858, and which, after being more fully elaborated 

 in the works of the latter and ably supported by 

 the former, secured, in the incredibly short space 

 of ten or twelve years, the general approval of a 

 large portion of the scientific world. The change 

 of opinion is, in fact, now such that there are 

 few scientific works on natural history, wheth- 

 er of a special or more general character, in 

 which the relation which the facts of science bear 

 to the newer doctrines is not carefully pointed 



out; that, with the general public too, the words 

 " Evolution " and " Development " have ceased to 

 excite the feelings, amounting almost to horror, 

 which they at first produced in the minds of 

 those to whom they were equally unfamiliar and 

 suspicious ; and that even in popular literature 

 and ephemeral effusions direct or metaphorical 

 illustrations are drawn in such terms of the Dar- 

 winian theory as " struggle for existence," "natu- 

 ral selection," "survival of the fittest," "heredi- 

 ty," "atavism," and the like. 



It cannot be doubted that in this country, as 

 on the Continent, the influence of authority had 

 much to do with the persistence of the older 

 teleological views; and, as has been well remarked 

 by Haeckel, one of the ablest and keenest sup- 

 porters of the modern doctrine, the combined in- 

 fluence more especially of the opinions held by 

 three of the greatest naturalists and biologists 

 who have ever lived, viz.-, Linnanis, Haller, and 

 Cuvier, men unsurpassed in the learning of their 

 time, and the authors of important discoveries in 

 a wide range of biological science, was decidedly 

 adverse to the free current of speculative thought 

 upon the more general doctrines of biology. And 

 if it were warrantable to attribute so great a 

 change of opinion as that to which I have advert- 

 ed as occurring in my own time to the influence 

 of any single intellect, it must be admitted that 

 it is justly due to the vast range and accuracy 

 of his knowledge of scientific facts, the quick ap- 

 preciation of their mutual interdependence, and 

 above all the unexampled clearness and candor 

 in statement, of Charles Darwin. 



But while we readily acknowledge the large 

 share which Darwin has had in guiding scientific 

 thought into the newer tracks of biological doc- 

 trine, we shall also be disposed to allow that the 

 slow and difficult process of emancipation from 

 the thralldom of dogmatic opinion in regard to a 

 system of creation, and the adoption of large and 

 independent views more consistent with observa- 

 tion, reason, philosophy, and religion, has only 

 been possible under the effect of the general 

 progress of scientific knowledge and the acquisi- 

 tion of sounder methods of applying its principles 

 to the explanation of natural phenomena. 



I have already referred to Goethe, Oken, La- 

 marck, and Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, as among the 

 most prominent of the earlier pioneers in the 

 modern or reformed conceptions of biological 

 laws. But were it desirable to mark the progress 

 of opinion by quoting other authors and laborers 

 whose contributions have mainly supplied the 

 materials out of which the new fabric has been 



