THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



not be identified with living specimens were assigned 

 to existing, but as yet undiscovered, species. The first 

 clear and distinct recognition of prehistoric animals 

 of now extinct species, occurred in the year 1800,, 

 when workmen brought to Cuvier a number of bones 

 found in a quarry near Paris, And he, with his vast 

 knowledge of existing animals, pronounced them to 

 be the remains of a species of elephant different from, 

 and much larger than, any alive at the present time. 

 From the bones he reconstructed the skeletons of the 

 animals, themselves. His results were published in 

 his celebrated Memoirs sur les especes d' elephants 

 vivants et fossils. It is hardly too frtuch to say that 

 this discovery by Cuvier was the essential fact with- 

 out which no scientific theory of evolution could he 

 developed. 



By the end of the eighteenth century the stage was 

 prepared for the enunciation of the doctrine of evolu- 

 tion. The subject was in the air — men of science re- 

 called the earlier tentative guesses; Kant and the 

 French Encyclopaedists incorporated the idea as a 

 principle of abstract philosophy; Goethe sang it in 

 poetry. The first steps were faltering ones. Even with 

 this striking proof of extinct species in his possession, 

 Lamarck, while proposing a comprehensive theory of 

 evolution and eagerly seeking for its verification, 

 could not grasp the idea of an almost infinite series of 

 species coming into existence and then passing away 

 during the periods of a remote past. This attitude of 



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