CHAPTER XVIII 



THE EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION THEORIES 



I, Greek Philosophers — 2. Aristotle — 3. Lucretius — 4. Evolution- 

 ists before Darwin — 5. Three old Masters : Buffon, Erasmus 

 Darwin, Lamarck — 6. Charles Dai-win — 7. Darwin^s Fellow- 

 workers — 8. The Present State of Opinion 



The conception of evolution is no new idea, it is the human 

 idea of history grown larger, large enough to cover the 

 whole world. The extension of the idea was gradual, as 

 men felt the need of extending it ; and at the same moment 

 we find men believing in the external permanence of one 

 set of phenomena, in the creation of others, in the evolution 

 of others. One authority says human institutions have been 

 evolved ; man was created ; the heavens are eternal. Ac- 

 cording to another, matter and motion are eternal ; life was 

 created ; the rest has been evolved, except, perhaps, the 

 evolution theory which was created by Darwin. 



I. Greek Philosophers. — Of the wise men of Greece 

 and what they thought of the nature and origin of 

 things, I shall say little, for I have no direct acquaintance 

 with the writings of those who lived before Aristotle. 

 Moreover, though an authority so competent as Zeller has 

 written on the "Grecian predecessors of Darwin," most of 

 them were philosophers not naturalists, and we are apt to 

 read our own ideas into their words. They thought, indeed, 

 as we are thinking, about the physical and organic universe, 

 and some of them believed it to be, as we do, the result of 



