CHAPTER V. 



FROM LORD BACON TO CHARLES DARWIN. 

 First Materials for the Controversy. 



I HAVE spoken of the celebrated dispute between 

 Cuvier and Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, in which 

 Goethe was so much interested. Materials for this 

 controversy had been rapidly accumulating during 

 the half century preceding the date when it finally 

 broke out in the French Academy. Indeed, it would 

 be truer to say that materials had been accumulating 

 during two centuries prior to the historic debate 

 between Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. From 

 the time of Bacon, Descartes and Leibnitz, more, 

 far more, had been done towards the development 

 of the Evolution idea than had been effected during 

 all the centuries which had elapsed between the 

 earliest speculations of the Ionian school and the 

 publication of the " Novum Organum." 



We have already learned what geology and pale- 

 ontology contributed towards the establishment of 

 the theory of Evolution. We have seen how the study 

 of fossils and the careful and long-continued examina- 

 tion of the much-vexed question of spontaneous gen- 

 eration shed a flood of light on numerous problems 

 which were before obscure and mysterious in the ex- 

 treme. But while Da Vinci, Fracostoro, Palissy, Steno, 

 Generelli, Redi, Malpighi, Leeuwenhoek, Schwam- 

 merdam and their compeers, were carrying on their 



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