56 EVOLUTION AND DOGMA. 



investigations regarding fossils and infusoria, students 

 in other departments of science were not idle. Ges- 

 ner, Vesalius, Fallopius, Fabricius and Harvey were 

 then conducting their famous researches in zoology, 

 anatomy, and embryology, while Cesalpinus, Ray, 

 Tournefort and Linnaeus were laying the secure 

 foundations of systematic botany and vegetable anat- 

 omy. It was to this period, indeed, that, as has 

 been truthfully observed : " We owe the foundation of 

 microscopic anatomy, enriched and joined to physi- 

 ology ; comparative anatomy studied with care ; class- 

 ification placed on a rational and systematic basis." 



Bacon and Kant. 



Lord Bacon was not only a firm believer in 

 organic Evolution but was one of the first to sug- 

 gest that the transmutation of species might be the 

 result of an accumulation of variations. Descartes, 

 too, inclined to Evolution rather than to special crea- 

 tion, and was the first philosopher, after St. Augus- 

 tine, who specially insisted that the sum of all 

 things is governed by natural laws, and that the 

 physical universe is not the scene of constant mira- 

 cles and Divine interventions. Leibnitz, like Bacon 

 and Descartes, accepted the doctrine of the muta- 

 bility of species, and showed in many passages in 

 his works, that no system of cosmic philosophy 

 could be considered complete which was not based 

 on the demonstrated truths of organic Evolution. 

 "All advances by degrees in nature," he tells us, 

 " and nothing by leaps, and this law, as applied to 

 each, is part of my doctrine of continuity." 



