LENN-EUS AS AN EVOLUTIONIST 



OT more than two decades have 

 passed since with most people 

 who had interested themselves 

 in such matters, and with quite 

 all who had not, evolutionistic theory and 

 Darwinism were synonymous; the supposi- 

 tion being that Charles Darwin had been the 

 original inventor, as well as the strong pro- 

 mulgator, of the hypothesis of the descent of 

 present-time species of living things from 

 earlier types. That misunderstanding no- 

 where now prevails; and while a multitude 

 of talkers and writers on all sorts of topics 

 use freely the term evolution, Darwinism is 

 less frequently mentioned; for it is coming 

 to be realized somewhat generally that there 

 were ''Darwinians" not a few, not only before 

 the Darwin of the nineteenth century, but 

 even before that almost as remarkable grand- 

 sire Darwin of the eighteenth. There were 

 evolutionists among the Greeks of five and 

 twenty centuries ago, and even among the 

 earliest luminaries of Christian philosophy and 

 theology of a period only less remote; while 

 after the revival of learning, and of an interest 



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