426 PROGRESS OF SCIENCE IN THE CENTURY. 



(3) As the result of the scientific renaissance in 

 the seventeenth century, when science re-asserted it- 

 self as a , natural expression and discipline of the 

 developing human spirit, the evolution-idea became 

 clear to many minds. Professor Osborn notes that 

 the philosophers, rather than the naturalists, were 

 " upon the main track of modern thought. '^ Des- 

 cartes (1596-1650) and Leibnitz (1640-1716) 

 point onwards to Spinoza and Hume, Lessing and 

 Schelling, Kant and Herder. On another line we 

 have Francis Bacon (1561-1626), clearly evolu- 

 tionist in his outlook. 



In the eighteenth century there were not a few 

 " speculative evolutionists," as Osborn calls them, 

 such as De Maillet, Maupertius, Diderot, and Bon- 

 net, whose methods w^ere wrong, though their ideas 

 were often right. Many say that the same title 

 must also be applied to Lorenz Oken (1776-1851). 



(4) As undoubted pioneers of modern evolution- 

 doctrine we must rank Buffon (1707-1788), Eras- 

 mus Darwin (1731-1802), Lamarck (1744-1829), 

 Goethe (1749-1832), Treviranus (1776-1837), 

 Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844), and 

 Robert Chambers (1802-1871) ; and there are others 

 of whom a complete history should take notice. We 

 have elsewhere given brief summaries of the char- 

 acteristic views of the pioneers.* 



(5) It may be said that Darwin did three chief 

 services to evolution-doctrine, (a) " By his patient, 

 scholarly, and pre-eminently fair-minded marshal- 

 ling of the so-called ' evidences ' which suggest the 

 doctrine of descent, he won the conviction of the bio- 

 logical world. He made the old idea current intel- 

 lectual coin. In so doing he was greatly aided by 



* Science of Life, 1899, pp. 219-223. 



