THE THEORIES OF 

 EVOLUTION 



CHAPTER I 



The Idea of Evolution before Darwin 



The dawn of the evolutionist idea. — The revival of natural 

 sciences in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. — Lin- 

 naeus, Cuvier. — The first transmutationists : Goethe, Eras- 

 mus Darwin, Lamarck, the originator of the transmutation 

 theory. — Ernest Geoffroi Saint-Hilaire versus Cuvier. — The 

 nature philosophers : Oken. — A period of stagnancy. — Mod- 

 ern transmutation theories. — Lyell; geological and paleon- 

 tological discoveries. — Herbert Spencer. — The publication 

 of Darwin's book. 



THE idea of evolution did not dawn upon stu- 

 dents of natural science until the end of the 

 eighteenth or the beginning of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury. We could, it is true, by going back to the Greek 

 philosophers, discover in some great intellects a 

 glimpse of the transmutation idea; but the following 

 centuries did not allow that seed to grow and between 

 the mentality of the ancients and the mentality of 

 those who took up again, centuries later, the study of 

 the same problem, we fail to see any direct filiation. 



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