318 EVOLUTION AND DOGMA. 



Milton and Ray. 



Incredible as it may seem, it was a poet who fas- 

 tened on science the signification which the word 

 "species" has so long borne. Prior to Milton's time 

 the meaning of the term, as employed by naturalists, 

 was vague and changeable in the extreme. Not so, 

 however, after the appearance of " Paradise Lost." 

 At once the account of creation, as given in this im- 

 mortal poem, began to be regarded as "a sort of 

 inspired gloss on the early chapters of Genesis," and 

 the botanist Ray, a younger contemporary of Milton, 

 had, accordingly, no difficulty in giving to the word 

 "species" a meaning which became as definite in 

 natural history, as it had long before been in logic 

 and metaphysics. The work of Milton and Ray was 

 complete. What naturalists from the time of Aris- 

 totle had been unable to do, was effected in less than 

 a generation by a poet and a botanist. And so uni- 

 versally was their meaning of the word accepted, 

 that it persisted in natural history usage, and almost 

 without any objections being raised against it, for 

 full two hundred years. It was adopted by Linnaeus 

 and given wide-spread currency in the numerous 

 works of the illustrious Swede. It was accepted by 

 the great Cuvierand his school, and thus a definition 

 of a single word, the meaning of which hinged on a 

 well-known episode in a celebrated poem, served for 

 two centuries to give permanency to a doctrine which, 

 notwithstanding the progress Evolution has made, 

 still has its supporters in all parts of the world. 

 Species were assumed to be fixed and invariable, 



