Evolutionism and Darwinism. 43 



cepted these traditional tenets as a part of his 

 system, and in that way procured for them a 

 wider circulation and a more general assent than 

 they had ever before obtained ; but Darwin never 

 claimed, nor could he have claimed, a patent for 

 the discovery of these ideas, nor did he assert 

 any right of exclusive proprietorship to them. 

 Darwin was not the author of the theory of de 

 velopment in any of its forms. It is his peculiar 

 and indisputable merit to have discovered the 

 mechanism by which (as is generally believed) 

 development is actually brought about in our 

 species of plants and animals. Not that there is ^ j 

 evolution in the world, but how evolution is ef 

 fected within the sphere of life, is the central 

 point of all Darwin s demonstrations. 



What, then, we must first of all ask, is the his 

 tory of that theory of evolution, the mechanism 

 of whose processes it was reserved for Darwin to 

 discover? Like most of the fundamental con 

 ceptions of our knowledge and our science, the 

 essential elements of the theory are as old as 

 human reflection. It did not spring suddenly 

 from the brain of Darwin. As evolution itself 

 teaches that nothing in the world is brand-new 

 nothing exists which did not pre-exist in another 

 form so must this be true of the theory of evo- 



