104 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



peopled with vegetable productions long before the 

 existence of animals, and many families of these 

 animals long before other families of them, shall we 

 conjecture that one and the same kind of living fila- 

 ment is and has been the cause of all organic life ? ' 

 Nor does he make any exception to this law of organic 

 development. He quotes Buffon and Helvetius to the 

 effect ' that many features in the anatomy of man 

 point to a former quadrupedal position, and indicate 

 that he is not yet fully adapted to the erect position ; 

 that, further, man may have arisen from a single 

 family of monkeys, in which, accidentally, the oppos- 

 ing muscle brought the thumb against the tips of the 

 fingers, and that this muscle gradually increased in 

 size by use in successive generations.' While we 

 who live in these days of fuller knowledge of agents 

 through which variation acts, may detect the minus 

 in all foregoing speculations, our interest is in- 

 creased in the thought of their near approach to 

 the cardinal discovery. And a rapid run through 

 the later writings of Dr. Darwin shows that there is 

 scarcely a side of the great theory of Evolution 

 which has escaped his notice or suggestive comment. 

 Grant Allen, in his excellent little monograph on 

 Charles Darwin, says that the theory of * natural selec- 

 tion was the only cardinal one in the evolutionary 

 system on which Erasmus Darwin did not actually 

 forestall his more famous and greater namesake. 

 For its full perception, the discovery of Malthus had 

 to be collated with the speculations of Buffon.' 



In the ' Historical Sketch on the Progress of 

 Opinion on the Origin of Species,' which Darwin 

 prefixed to his book, he refers to Lamarck as ' the 



