458 THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



X. The Ideal Preconditions of Darwinism 



Failure of Lamarck' s theory 

 The question has not infrequently been discussed: Why did not Lamarck's 

 theory of evolution succeed? The reason has been put down to the opposi- 

 tion of the Church, but certainly without justification; as far as is known, 

 Lamarck was never interfered with by the Church, and the latter's opposi- 

 tion to the theories of origin and species-m.odification is, as we shall find, 

 of a far later date. We are, then, far more justified in blaming the romantic 

 natural philosophy, which, seeking, as it did, after one common idea for 

 every life -form, lacked all feeling for material development. For herein lies 

 the real gist of the problem: if a theory of evolution is to attract general 

 attention, there must naturally be evinced an interest in evolution. Our next 

 duty, therefore, will be to try to explain how this interest arose and how it 

 expressed itself at the time of Darwin's appearance. 



It is common knowledge that mankind is always ready to fix its ideals 

 in antiquity — "the good old times." One is most inclined to deplore the 

 present and to view the future with feelings of anxiety. And just like indi- 

 viduals, the public opinion of the different epochs has done the same; if 

 man has carried out reforms, it has mostly been done under the form of 

 reviving the ideal conditions of ages long past; so it was during the Refor- 

 mation, when people vv^ished to revert to the conditions of early Christianity, 

 and so too during the French Revolution, when people raved over the re- 

 publics of antiquity, and imaginative popular leaders called themselves An- 

 acharsis or Gracchus. If one has dared to cast a glance at the future, one has 

 most probably expected to find happiness in some vast catastrophe resulting 

 in the total annihilation of the present; thus all apocalyptical enthusiasts 

 of antiquity and ever since, and thus too the political extreme tendencies of 

 modern times. Belief in a gradually progressive, law-bound development has 

 always been limited to a few, and these perhaps are to be found among the 

 men of action rather than men of thoughts and words. The most pronounced 

 faith in progress that has ever existed has been the liberalism of the nine- 

 teenth century, a current of ideas which had just reached its zenith by the 

 middle of the century, when the theory of origin came to the fore. The co- 

 incidence is of course not accidental; on the contrary, the one idea is de- 

 pendent on the other, and therefore the victory of Darwinism is inexplicable 

 without some insight into the general intellectual conditions at the time 

 of its birth. 



Liberalism of the nineteenth century 

 The optimistic belief of liberalism in the progress of the human race had its 

 true origin in England, where throughout the entire eighteenth century 

 prosperity and enlightenment increased slowly but surely, where humane 



