INTRODUCTORY 



Heraclitus, of Ephesus, and Gautama the Buddha. 

 As I have devoted an essay in a previous volume 

 to their claims in this connection, I will only briefly 

 deal with them here. 



Neither of these thinkers, it need hardly be said, 

 has left us a systematic philosophy of evolution. 

 The founder of Buddhism, indeed, like the founder 

 of Christianity, and Socrates, the founder of moral 

 philosophy, has left us no writings whatever, and 

 we have but scattered fragments of the works of 

 Heraclitus. Yet it seems plain that each of these 

 thinkers had a more or less complete grasp of the 

 doctrine of ordered change as exemplified in such, 

 relatively few, facts as were known in that day. 

 I name them here because their distance from us 

 lends something like enchantment to our view 

 of them ; but in calling them the first evolutionists 

 I do not mean to suggest that the whole of the 

 synthetic philosophy is implicit in any doctrines 

 which are attributed to them. 



In summing up this chapter, then, let us have it 

 clearly set down that the popular use of the term 

 evolution, to signify the notion that man is de- 

 scended from a monkey, is little less than an abuse 

 of the term. Similarly indefensible is the use of 

 this term to signify organic evolution the theory 

 that animals and plants, as seen in existing species, 

 are evolved from other forms. Still more inde- 

 fensible is the ridiculous identification of evolution 

 with natural selection the unfortunate term by 

 which Darwin sought to express a certain means 



