( 18) 
How then did the fixity of species become an article of 
belief in later years? Aubrey Moore traces it to the influence 
of Milton’s account of creation in the seventh book of 
“Paradise Lost” (1. 414, e¢ seg.), and Professor Huxley 
had still earlier suggested the same cause in his ‘‘ American 
Addresses.” I cannot help thinking that the belief had even 
more to do with the spirit of the age which spoke, and spoke 
for all time, with Milton for its interpreter,—the spirit of the 
Puritan movement, with its insistence on literal interpreta- 
tion and verbal inspiration. 
John Ray was Milton’s younger contemporary, and many 
writers, including Aubrey Moore, have thought that with him 
began the idea of the fixity of species. Sir William Thiselton 
Dyer has, however, recently pointed out, that a conception 
similar to Ray’s may be traced to Kaspar Bauhin (1550-1624) 
and to Jung (1587-1657).* 
From Ray we pass to Linneus with his often quoted 
definition, “Species tot sunt, quot diversas formas ab initio 
produxit Infinitum Ens, quae formae, secundum generationis 
inditas leges produxere plures, at sibi semper similes.” Of 
the Ray-Linnzeus-Cuvier conception of species which found its 
most precise and authoritative expression in the above-quoted 
latin sentence, Dr. F. A. Dixey has well said that it ‘‘ left 
order where it found confusion, but in substituting exactness 
of definition for the vague conceptions of a former age, it did 
much to obscure the rudimentary notions of organic evolution 
which had influenced naturalists and philosophers from 
Aristotle downwards.” + At the same time it is by no means 
improbable, as Dixey has suggested, that the Linnean concep- 
tion “of the reality and fixity of species perhaps marks a 
necessary stage in the progress of scientific enquiry.” t 
The Linnean idea of special creation has no place in the 
realm of science ; it is a theological dogma. The formation 
of species, said Darwin in a letter to Lyell, “has hitherto 
been viewed as beyond law; in fact, this branch of science 
* ««The Edinburgh Review,’ Oct. 1902, p. 370. 
+ ‘‘Nature,” June 19, 1902, p. 169. For the history of these early 
ideas upon evolution see ‘‘ From the Greeks to Darwin,” by H. F. Osborn, 
New York, 1894. 
+ ‘*Church Quarterly Review,” Oct. 1902, Art. II p. 28. 
