EVOLUTION BEFORE DARWIN 1 3 



A little later the philosopher, Leibnitz, believed in 

 an orderly creation that had advanced by regular de- 

 grees, and that the lower animals had thus developed 

 into the higher. He adds interestingly that there are 

 probably on some other planets animals midway be- 

 tween the ape and man, but that nature has kindly 

 removed such animals from the earth in order that 

 man's superiority to the apes should be entirely be- 

 yond question. 



By the middle of the eighteenth century men had 

 begun to think more fearlessly. The great Emanuel 

 Kant wrote in his younger and less timid years, "The 

 General History of Nature and Theory of the Heav- 

 ens." The great Newton had by his law of gravita- 

 tion brought order into the heavens. Kant looked 

 longingly for a greater Newton, who should find a 

 similar unity in the animal world. He saw the won- 

 derful likenesses between animals that the anatomist, 

 Buffon, had recently pointed out. He believed there 

 must somehow be blood relationship between all ani- 

 mals. He tried hard to conceive of some underlying 

 natural cause by which all could have come about. 

 As he grew older and his mind became more cautious 

 he came to think the matter deeper than the human 

 mind could ever fathom. He gave up the hope 

 and believed the problem of animal origin and deri- 

 vation would forever remain insoluble. He feared 



