LORD BACON TO CHARLES DARWIN. 57 



Immanuel Kant, in common with his illustrious 

 contemporary, Buffon, accepted the ideas that spe- 

 cific mutability results from selection, environment, 

 adaptation and inheritance. Like the great French 

 naturalist, too, he derived all the higher forms of 

 life from lower and simpler forms. He recognized 

 also the law of degeneration from original types, 

 and the principle of the survival of the fittest, which 

 were subsequently to play such important roles in 

 all theories of organic Evolution. Indeed, I do not 

 think Kant has received due recognition for his con- 

 tributions towards the philosophy of the cosmos. 

 Like Aristotle, he had a faculty for correct gener- 

 alization which sometimes gave his views almost 

 the semblance of prophecy. Taking up the nebular 

 hypothesis, as it was left by St. Gregory of Nyssa, 

 he adapted it to the science of his time, and in many 

 respects forestalled the conclusions of Laplace and 

 Herschel. Similarly he took up the principles of 

 Evolution as they had been laid down by St. Augus- 

 tine and the Angel of the Schools, and, by giving 

 them a new dress, he anticipated much of the evolu- 

 tionary teaching of subsequent investigators. Con- 

 sidering the time in which he wrote, nothing is more 

 remarkable than the following comprehensive rtfsumd 

 of his views on Evolution : 



" It is desirable to examine the great domain 

 of organized beings by means of a methodical, com- 

 parative anatomy, in order to discover whether we 

 may not find in them something resembling a sys- 

 tem, and that, too, in connection with their mode of 

 generation, so that we may not be compelled to stop 



