VI.] EARLY EVOLUTION IDEAS. 163 



thereby arrived at those metaphysical absurdities which 

 are now amongst the curiosities of history. There had 

 appeared at various times, however, revolts against this 

 general body of opinion, and upon more than one occa- 

 sion men had come to believe more or less dimly in 

 some kind of a progressive movement in which both 

 nature and man were in some way concerned. This be- 

 lief was even known to the Greeks. The doctrine of the 

 special or particular creation of the forms of life had 

 been held with fierce tenacity in later times, and had 

 become embodied in the forms of religious thought. 

 Yet, at the opening of our century, there had accumu- 

 lated a considerable body of belief in the spontaneous 

 or natural origin of forms of life, and consequently in 

 the present rejuvenescence or progressive tendency in 

 nature. This movement has matured in our own time, 

 and it has come to be known as evolution. I have 

 said this much by way of introduction for the purpose 

 of emphasizing two facts, — that this habit of thought, 

 which is now well-nigh universal, is itself a gradual 

 evolution from the centuries, and that to hold this belief 

 does not necessarily imply assent to any particular 

 dogma either of religion or science. 



I have said that there was belief in evolution at the 

 opening of the century. It was mostly confined to 

 naturalists, especially to those under French influence. 

 Amongst those who most clearly perceived it were gar- 

 deners or garden -authors, who, observing the wonderful 

 transformations of plants under cultivation, were led to 

 consider that whole groups of plants must have had a 

 common origin. Thus Duchesne, in 1766, concluded 

 that all the species of strawberries must have sprung 

 from the ever -bearing strawberry of Europe. Gallesio, 



