56 'WHAT IS A SPl^XIES?' 



o^ Paradise Lost (1. 414 ct scq.), and Professor Huxley 

 had still earlier suoftjfested the same cause in his American 

 Addresses. I cannot help thinking- that the belief had 

 even more to do with the s|)irit of the aL(e which spoke, 

 and spoke for all time, with Milton for its interpreter — 

 the spirit of the Puritan movement, witli its insistence 

 on literal interpretation and verbal inspiration. 



John Ra) was Milton's younger contemporary, and 

 man)- writers, includinj^ 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 Kasj)ar liauhin (1S50-1624), and to Jung 



(1587-1657).' 



I'rom Ray we pass to Linnaeus with his celebrated 

 definition. Oi the Ray-Linnaeus-Cuvier conception of 

 species which found its most precise and authoritative 

 expression in the Latin sentence quoted on p. 54, Dr. 

 F. A. Dixey has w^ell said that it ' left order where it had 

 found confusion, but in substitutimj 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 

 Linnaean conception ' of the reality and fixity of species 

 perhaps marks a necessary stage in the progress of 

 scientific inquiry ' ? 



The Linnaean idea of special creation has no place in 

 the realm of science; it is a theoloijical doirma. The 

 formation of species, said Darwin in a letter to L)ell, 

 ' has hitherto been viewed as beyond law ; in fact, this 

 branch of science is still with most people under its 

 theological phase of development.' ' And this explains 



' The Edifiliuri^h RtTt'au, October, 1902, p. 370. 



' iVii/i/rc, June 19, 1902, p. 169. For the history of these early ideas 

 upon evolution see /'Vi'/zi the Greeks to Darwin, by II. F. Osborn, New 

 York, 1894. 



^ Church Quarterly Reviiw, October, 1902, Art. II, j). 28. 



* Letter 132 to C. Lyell, August 21, 1861. More Letters 0/ Charles 

 Darivin, London, 1903, i, p. 194. 



