THE HISTORY OF ANIMAL LIFE 389 



which evolution occurs. The whole concept of evolution as held 

 today embraces the history of the development of the several views 

 as to the mechanism of evolution. The Greeks expressed ideas that 

 are unquestionably evolutionary interpretations of life but are curi- 

 ous mixtures of fact and fancy, observations of real, and descrip- 

 tions of imaginary and fantastic beasts. The leaders of the early 

 Christian church, particularly St. Augustine, drew their philosophy 

 in part from Greek civilization and also expressed views that living 

 forms arise by something like an evolutionary process. But in the 

 sixteenth century a Spanish monk, Suarez, wrote pamphlets oppos- 

 ing the views of St. Augustine and advocating the doctrine of spe- 

 cial CREATION, namely, the thesis that all species have existed 

 without change since their original simultaneous creation by super- 

 natural effort. Suarez was not the first to advocate this doctrine, 

 but his efforts gave it a strong impetus. In England, Milton's Para- 

 dise Lost had a similar and powerful effect. Thus after an interval 

 of a thousand years the doctrine of special creation came to supplant 

 the seeds of the doctrine of evolution in the mind of Western 

 civilization. No further important progress in the development of 

 the concept of evolution appeared until late in the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, when Buffon, a Frenchman, wrote a natural history in which 

 he showed with some clearness that the different forms of life were 

 gradually produced. But Buffon interlarded his writings with com- 

 ments to the effect that this could not be true, for he had been 

 taught differently. In 1794 Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles 

 Darwin, published his book, Zoonomia, in which he suggested that 

 acquired characters are inherited and that certain natural condi- 

 tions operate to select the animals best fitted to survive. His work 

 met with considerable antagonism and, his views and those of 

 Buffon made no immediate progress. 



Lamarck. A complete doctrine of evolution first took form 

 with the publication of the views of Lamarck in 1809, the year in 

 which Charles Darwin was born. Lamarck expressed two principles 



