THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



comes to us in different ways, yet the facts of the 

 mind are as certain as those of the sensations.^* 



After Aristotle's death, Greek thought gradually 

 divided into the two schools of the Stoics and the Epi- 

 cureans. In essence, both were a retrogression from 

 dualism to a materialistic monism and a concession 

 to our desire for unity and simplicity. As these two 

 schools held the world of thought in allegiance well 

 into the Roman Empire and exerted much influence 

 on Christian writers, their ideas of science and evolu- 

 tion are very important. 



24 I have pointed out the frequent reference by historians of science 

 to Aristotle as a founder of the doctrine of evolution. To me, this 

 vv^as an impossible assumption vv^hich I believe is due to a super- 

 ficial knowledge of Aristotle's philosophy and to a misconception 

 of his use of the words continuity, gradations, etc. It is fortunate to 

 find my opinion confirmed by so authoritative an Aristotelian scholar 

 as M, Clodius Piat. He quotes the following passage of Aris- 

 totle, Historia Animalium, VIII, i, 588b, as the nearest approach to 

 evolution to be found in his works; "The passage from inanimate 

 to animate beings is so gradual that we cannot distinguish where 

 their common limit is and to which of the two belong the inter- 

 mediate forms. To the inanimate kingdom succeeds immediately the 

 kingdom of plants. . . . The passage from plants to animals is 

 equally continuous." He comments on this apparently explicit state- 

 ment of evolution as follows: "Is this theory of Aristotle a first 

 sketch of evolution? We might be tempted to believe so because of 

 his manner of speaking of continuity and analogy. But we shall 

 very quickly change this opinion, if we consider his fundamental 

 ideas of metaphysics. The First Cause, being immovable, involves 

 eternally the same efficiency, the same power of expansion external- 

 ly as internally ; consequently nature gives at once all that it is 

 capable of giving: it does not advance by steps. It is not because the 

 ideal forms do not tend to improve ; of themselves, there are no 

 immobile types, as others have often believed. On the contrary, 

 they work always to deliver and purify themselves, to conquer some 

 new degree of perfection ; if nothing opposed their inner energy 

 which pushes them onwards they would lose themselves by one 

 leap into pure Action : there would remain only the thought of 

 thought. But matter also exists which resists such love of the better; 

 and this resistance holds the ideal Forms at the same point. Nature 

 as a result can recreate anew the Forms which death has destroyed; 

 it can repair only the losses." C. Piat, Aristote, Alcan et Cie., p. 158. 



1(^1 



