282 Theories of Evolution and Creation 



considered valid. Buffon did nevertheless attempt to go 

 beyond the general theory of transformation by searching 

 for explanations in the actual, observable plants and 

 animals. 



Toward the very end of the Eighteenth Century, Goethe 

 in Germany, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in France, and Erasmus 

 Darwin (the grandfather of Charles Darwin) in England 

 made independent attempts to formulate an explanation of 

 hoiv change in organic forms is brought about. Each of 

 these thinkers was impressed by the outstanding character- 

 istic which living things have in common. These are a more 

 or less adequate fitness for their respective environments, and, 

 from the point of view of the individual's life, an adjusta- 

 bility to changes in the environment. Each of these writers 

 accumulated numerous concrete facts illustrating the 

 modifications resulting from one or another factor in the 

 environment. And each laid more or less emphasis upon 

 the discriminating effect of the environment, in the sense 

 of exterminating the relatively less well adapted. Not one 

 of these, however, pursued the subject over a sufficiently 

 wide range of living things to bring him to a consistent 

 theory in the modern sense. 



We may infer the importance which Goethe attached 

 to the studies from the fact that at eighty-one years he was 

 greatly agitated by the report of a debate on evolution be- 

 tween Cuvier and Saint-Hilaire, whereas he dismissed the 

 news of a political revolution, received on the same day, with 

 indifference. The debate between Cuvier and Saint-Hilaire 

 was formally won by the former, who in addition to being 

 a master of comparative anatomy, had a more ardent dis- 

 position than the meditative Saint-Hilaire. All the intellec- 

 tual centers of Europe were stirred by this debate. It turned 

 the attention of the younger scientists and scholars to the 

 issue, but it also had the effect of obstructing a serious con- 

 sideration of ideas favorable to evolution. Cuvier, like 

 Linnasus, assumed the fixity of species. Lamarck and Saint- 

 Hilaire, on the other hand, had concerned themselves with 



