HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF EVOLUTION THEORY 15 



Au^iisth ie (333-430 A.D.) co nceived the idea, now so gen erally 

 adopted by theolo gians, that the biblical acc-a iint nf c.reationJa-alle- 

 gorical. "In explaining the passage 'In the beginning God created 

 heaven and the earth,' he says: 



"In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth, as if this 

 were the seed of the heaven and the earth, although as yet all the 

 matter of heaven and of earth was in confusion, but because it was 

 certain that from this the heaven and the earth would be, therefore 

 the material itself is called by that name." 



TJiomas Aquinas (1225-74), who wrote much later and was one of 

 the leadingchurch authorities, satisfie d himself with merely exp ound- 

 in g Augus tine: "As to the production of plants, Augustine holds a 

 different view, .... for some say that on the third day plants were 

 actually produced, each in its kind^a view favoured by the superficial 

 reading of Scripture. But Augustine says that the earth is then said 

 to have brought forth grass and trees causaliter; that is, it then 

 received the power to produce them. For in those first days .... 

 God made creation primarily or causaliter, and then rested from His 

 work." 



THE REVIVAL O F SCIENCE 



Du ring the long centuries until the awakening of scienc e m. the 

 Middle Ages the ev^olution idea smou MerH (\V^Z '" ^^^ pi'T^ds of a 

 few thinkers, but it was only when a few (daring) spirits broke the 

 trammels of scholasticism- and be gan once more to give free rein to 

 obs ervation a nd speculation that the idea once more burst into flame 

 an d began its second great period of advan ce. 



A small group of natu ral philosophers , scarcely more scientific 

 in their methods than the Greeks, were .the_first_to_reyive interest in 

 th e evolution idea. Of th ese the names of Bacon, Descartes, L eib- 

 ni tz, and Ka nt are_the__;.i)Ofit famnu'^ 



Francis IB aeon (1=^6 1^626) did m uch to r evive the vogue of_Aris-v 

 totelian ideas . He also added some new ideas: (i) that the muta- 

 bihty of species was the result of the accumulation of variations; (2) 

 that variations of an extreme kind, equivalent to "mutations," some- 

 times occur; (3) that new species might arise by a degenerative 

 process from old species. 



Emmanuel Kant {i^ 2^-1^0^) was purely a philosopher, not an 

 observing liaturali^t, but he profited by the writings of the contem- 

 porary naturalists, especially those of Buffon and JMaupertius. His 



