4 8o SCIENCE PROGRESS 



hinted at organic evolution, at transformism, as Butler asserts he did hint, when 

 he compared the cat with the ounce, the dog-fish with the shark, and the Hispag- 

 nolian with dogs and wolves. Goethe suggested the formation upon an original 

 of all more perfect types ; Erasmus Darwin surmised that an original living fila- 

 ment was excited into action by necessities and became the source of all organic 

 life ; the author of The Vestiges of Creation, Lamarck, and many others understood 

 transformism to be a candidate for recognition. This candidature had been 

 realised by the Greeks : Anaximander, for instance, supposed that fish deserted 

 the water for dryland, acquired new members and became msn. The candidature 

 of transformism dates back virtually to the first " syllable of recorded time " in the 

 universal belief in metamorphosis that dominated the primitive mind. Cinderella's 

 coach, made from a pumpkin, and her horses, transformed mice, still preserve for 

 the nursery an echo from the beginnings of transformism's candidature for recog- 

 nition. But Charles Darwin first perceived and disclosed the real value and 

 character of the candidate. His originality, his claim to be regarded as the real 

 fou7ider (not merely the suggestor) of the conception of organic evolution, rests 

 on the final dominance he secured for this conception. Before the publication of 

 the Origin of Species in 1859 it was possible to think without reference to trans- 

 formism ; after its publication it was no longer possible. The conception of 

 organic evolution, the conception that species increase and spread by the trans 

 formation of previous species, stepped from its status of mere candidature for 

 recognition into the position of a determining category of thought, still compelling 

 us to think in its terms and to conceive of all life according to the method it 

 imposes. Charles Darwin made the concept of evolution a dominant concept ; 

 till he made it dominant it had never been more than an interesting suggestion. 



Dalton did for the corpuscular theory of matter what Darwin subsequently did 

 for transformism. Physical speculations had never been able to proceed very far 

 without the assumption that matter consists of small ultimate particles. They had 

 proceeded without it, just as interpretation of animate nature had been possible, 

 and to some degree successful, without coming under the dominance of the 

 concept of evolution. It seems fair to say, however, that the corpuscular theory 

 of matter, possibly because it was more essential to thinking at all than the 

 concept of transformism, was more specifically thought out into the system 

 of thought before Dalton established it firmly and dominantly in the Atomic 

 Theory than the theory of organic evolution was thought out as a primary concept 

 before Darwin impressed its recognition. For this reason, possibly, Darwin's 

 inception of the doctrine of organic evolution evinced more of the character of an 

 ad hoc hypothesis than Dalton's introduction of the Atomic Theory. It was 

 thought formerly that Dalton did first propound his hypothesis absolutely ad 

 hoc. It was supposed that, to explain such principles as the constancy of 

 proportion discovered in chemical combination, he again invented the idea 

 of the atom, just as the Greeks, long before him, had invented it to explain the 

 phenomena of the material world. It is improbable in the highest degree that 

 Dalton should have been so ignorant or forgetful of the atoms or corpuscles 

 figuring for centuries in physical speculation as to conceive his Atomic Theory in 

 entire independence of previous theories. Roscoe and Harden have shown that 

 he did, in actual fact, found the Atomic Theory as an adaptation of previous 

 corpuscular hypotheses to explain the discoveries of chemistry. Darwin was 

 apparently less dependent on previous versions of transformism than Dalton 

 on previous versions of corpuscular theories. Malthus suggested to him his 

 famous theory of Natural Selection, and by this route he again encountered the 



