166 THE SCIENCE OF BIOLOGY 



of conversation in intellectual circles, particularly on the 

 continent. In England, the subject was not widely con- 

 sidered until it was set forth at length in the "Zoonomia" of 

 Erasmus Darwin (1794). In France, the studies, upon which 

 Lamarck was to base his theory of the causes of evolutionary 

 modification, were already well advanced before the close of 

 the century. As we have seen, the closing decades of the 

 eighteenth century witnessed a remarkable extension of 

 fundamental concepts in many scientific lines. Notable 

 among them is this greatest of biological theories. 



These early evolutionists have not received sufficient 

 credit, because the concept of organic evolution suffered a 

 decline during the early decades of the nineteenth century 

 and was not generally accepted until after the appearance of 

 Darwin's "Origin of Species." The fact that, as a group, 

 the transmutationists were not orthodox scientists is prob- 

 ably in part responsible for their neglect and for a certain 

 patronizing attitude toward men like Maupertuis and 

 Diderot on the part of nineteenth century commentators on 

 the history of evolutionary speculation. There has been too 

 much inclination to believe that serious evolutionary thought 

 began with Darwin. As a matter of fact, the state of scien- 

 tific opinion, during the nineteenth century prior to 1859, is 

 not creditable to the scientific workers in biological lines. 

 Instead of the open-mindedness, on which scientists pride 

 themselves, we see the men of science adhering to traditional 

 interpretations and blind to the meaning of their own facts, 

 while some of the supposedly inferior philosophers were 

 alive to the significance of the facts discovered by the scien- 

 tists. The explanation, which suggests itself, is that the 

 mind which is most capable, in the accumulation of details, 

 is frequently lacking in the appreciation of larger meanings. 

 At certain times in the history of science, the systematic 

 mind has prevailed and at others the mind which grasps at 

 meanings. Only the exceptional individual, such as Darwin, 

 combines the two. When lesser minds run to theorizing, as 



