A Story Outline of Evolution 



have been the same. These principles have surrounded all 

 men of all ages but they could not see them until great 

 thinkers had woven them together and proved that the pow- 

 ers of Nature are working through a universal method of 

 growth. The veil of mystery has been lifted and we now 

 see the workings of Nature as they really are. 



Prior to about seventy-five or eighty years ago, the 

 great Sciences were being studied as separate and inde- 

 pendent branches of knowledge with no thought of their 

 dependence and relationship to one another. But long prior 

 to that time, the gentle waves of human thought had begun 

 to quicken and to concentrate on the origin of species. 

 Aristotle seems to have caught the first nebulous mental 

 flash of the principle of natural selection. Goethe in Ger- 

 many, Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire in France and Dr. Erasmus 

 Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin, in England, 

 had reached approximately the same conclusions in 1794- 

 1795, namely, that species undergo modifications and that 

 the existing forms of life have not been perpetuated since 

 the origin of all things. Lamarck of France in 1801, then 

 in 1809 and again in 18 15 had thought out crude and imper- 

 fect outlines asserting that "all species, including man, are 

 descended from other species." From this time on until 

 1859, a score or more of naturalists in Germany, France, 

 England and the United States added their contributions to 

 the unorganized scientific thought of the world concerning 

 the materials and the powers of Nature action. 



Charles Darwin after twenty-two years of intensive 

 study and research work published, in 1859, his famous 

 book on the "Origin of Species." This book quickly crystal- 



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