THE OFFSPRING OF SCIENCE 



creting out of the formless mist and moving with 

 inconceivable velocity in all directions." Thus 

 the 1 9th century reaffirmed on a more infinitesimal 

 and refined scale the atomic theory of Demokri- 

 tos. 



With the steady progress of this new tendency, 

 Lamarckian ideas gained more and more favor 

 in the eyes of the younger generation of scien- 

 tists and found two able champions, about the 

 middle of the I9th century, in Alfred R. Wallace 

 and Charles Darwin. In 1859, Darwin's " Origin 

 of Species " carried fresh dismay into the ranks 

 of metaphysics and theology. Here was the 

 irrefutable proof that Lamarck's ideas of descent 

 and heredity were upheld by the facts of nature 

 as occurring before our eyes in animals and plants. 

 And in addition to these irrefutable facts, Dar- 

 win laid bare the mechanism by which natural 

 evolution produced the various animal and plant 

 species, which had so long been claimed as special 

 creations. Without any guiding intellect, with- 

 out any preconceived purpose, by an apparently 

 fortuitous natural selection, which, however, was 

 the product of forces mutually controlling one 

 another, nature was seen to produce its variety 

 of forms by incessant interaction of forces, by a 

 struggle of all organic forms against one another 



133 



