DEVELOPMENT OF BIOLOGY 471 



7. Organic Evolution 



A question which has interested and perplexed thinking men of 

 all times is how things came to be as they are to-day. The historian 

 of human affairs attempts to trace the sequence and relationship 

 of events from the remote past to the present. Similarly, the geol- 

 ogist endeavors to formulate the history of the Earth; and the bi- 

 ologist, the history of plants and animals on the Earth. All rec- 



Fig. 307. — Comte de Buffbn. 



ognize that the present is the child of the past and the parent of 

 the future, and that past, present, and future, though causally re- 

 lated, are never the same. It was the Greek natural philosophers 

 who introduced this idea of history into science and attempted to 

 give a naturalistic explanation of the Earth and its inhabitants, 

 and thus started the uniformitarian trend of thought which cul- 

 minated in the establishment of organic evolution during the past 

 century. (Page 349.) 



Aristotle apparently held the general idea of the evolution of 

 life from a primordial mass of living matter to the higher forms, 

 and placed Man at the head of animal creation. 'To him be- 

 longs the God-like nature. He is preeminent by thought and voli- 

 tion. But although all are dwarf -like and incomplete in comparison 

 with Man, he is only the highest point of one continuous ascent.'' 

 And evolution is still going on — the highest has not yet been 



