52 Later Evolutionary Science. 



ary movement, at the same time that his friend 



xLyell was carrying it into geology. We 



abundantly found that Darwin did noLoriginate- 

 -7 the general theory of evolution. We are now to 

 see he was not the first to propound even the 

 more limited doctrine of the evolution of plants 

 and animals. Fifteen years before he was born, 

 his own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, in Eng 

 land, the poet Goethe, in Germany, and Geoffrey 

 Saint Hilaire, the French naturalist, came almost 

 simultaneously to the conclusion that species were 

 not separate creations and immutable, but de 

 scendants of pre-existing simpler forms and ca 

 pable of undergoing modifications. From that 

 day to this there has been a ferment of specula 

 tion on the origin of species. Early in the cen 

 tury it took the form of an antagonism between 

 creation and evolution. Are our species of plants 

 and animals primeval creations, or modified de 

 scendants of simpler species ? A horse is different 

 from a zebra ; a man is different from a monkey 

 were they created different, or is each pair de 

 scended from a common ancestor? The evolu 

 tionary view of the question was maintained 

 throughout the first third of our century by the 

 \ eminent French naturalist, Lamarck, &quot;whose 

 conclusions on the subject excited much attention.&quot; 



