368 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 



(2) That the universe came into existence by an act of special 

 creation. (3) That the present is the outcome of all the past, by 

 a process of gradual change, and that, as part of this process, from 

 an original homogeneous nebula our earth, with all its diverse 

 mineral, vegetable, and animal forms, has been evolved by causes 

 acting in sequences of such a sort as can be traced and formulated, 

 the formulae being called Laws of Nature. This last is the Evolu- 

 tion Theory. 



This evolution theory is almost as old as human thought; but 

 formerly it was far from being universally received. In fact, the 

 opposite theory, the doctrine of the fixity and immutability of 

 species was almost universal up to the end of the eighteentb 

 century. This was due to the influence of the Platonic philosophy; 

 with its doctrine of the eternal ideas, and to the fact that science 

 was completely dominated by myth and philosophy during the 

 middle ages. Under Coi^ernicus, Harvey, and Newton, science 

 began to revive, and the doctrine of evolution took shape in the 

 minds of men such as Buffon, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Goethe, 

 Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, Lyell, Herschel, Robert Chambers, 

 Herbert Spencer, and Alfred Russel Wallace. In 1859, it received 

 a large contribution by the publication of Charles Darwin's 

 Origin of Species. 



Kant, Laplace, and Herschel had applied the evolution theory 

 to astronomy; Lyell had brought in the theory of uniformity in 

 geology as opposed to violent revolutions, in order to explain the 

 present structure of the earth's crust; Erasmus Darwin and 

 Lamarck applied the theory to biology; and Charles Darwin 

 extended its application to that science, and discovered principles 

 of evolution which could be applied, as Herbert Spencer had 

 done even before Darwin's writing, to psychology, and, as many 

 others have since done, to sociology and every branch of science. 



Charles Darwin's work must not be confused with the labours 

 of others in the field of evolution. Before he wrote, there was 

 no doubt in the minds of many that there was truth in the theory. 

 Biologists believed in the variation of plant and animal forms, 

 and brought forward theories to account for the modifications. 

 Erasmus Darwin, in 1794, held that change of environment was a 

 cause of variation. Lamarck, in 1801, held to three chief means 

 of modification — the direct action of the physical conditions of 

 life, the crossing of already existing forms, and the use and disuse 

 of organs, i.e., habit. These were attempts, not to prove evolu- 

 tion, which the authors firmly believed in, but to find a vera causa 

 to account for, or to explain how, evolution took place ; not to prove 

 the fact, but to discover the factors. Charles Darwin followed this 

 up by another contribution to the forces or method of evolution — 

 another vera causa, viz., natural selection. This is founded on the 



