LORD BACON TO CHARLES DARWIN. 59 



paratus, as seen in organic beings, is so incomprehen- 

 sible to us, that we conceive for it a different prin- 

 ciple. But it would seem that the archaeologist of 

 nature, that is, the paleontologist, is at liberty to 

 regard the great family of creatures for a family we 

 must conceive it, if the above-mentioned continuous 

 and connected relationship has a real foundation 

 as having sprung from the immediate results of her 

 earliest revolutions, judging from all the laws of 

 their mechanisms known to, or conjectured by him." ' 

 Passing over such speculative evolutionists as 

 De Maillet, Maupertuis, Bonnet, Robinet and Oken, 

 who did little more than revamp the crude notions 

 of the old Ionian speculators, we may scan in hasty 

 review the principal contributions made to the evo- 

 lutionary movement by the great naturalists who 

 flourished between the time of Linnaeus and Cuvier. 



Linnaeus and Buffon. 



Linnaeus, who adopted the well-known aphorism 

 of Leibnitz, natura non facit sa/tutn, was as much of 

 a special creationist and, consequently, as much op- 

 posed to Evolution as was the illustrious Cuvier. 

 But although in the earlier part of his career he con- 

 tended that there were no such things as new 

 species nullce species nova still, at a later period, 

 he was willing to admit that " all species of one 

 genus constituted at first, that is, at creation, one 

 species" ab initio unant constituerint speciem but 

 maintained that " they were subsequently multiplied 



1 Quoted in Osborne's useful little work " From the Greeks to 

 Darwin," pp. 101, 102, 



