RETROSPECT. 



247 



' mutability of species ' of Bacon, Leibnitz, Buffon, 

 Lamarck, and St. Hilaire. 



The direct transition from the inorganic to the 

 organic is seen to have had a host of friends, nearly 

 to the present time, including, besides all the Greeks, 

 Lucretius, Augustine, Maillet, Buffon, Erasmus 

 Darwin, Lamarck, Treviranus, Oken, and Chambers- 

 Then we have seen the difficulty of ' origin ' removed 

 one step back by the ' pre-existent germs ' of Anaxa- 

 goras, revived by Maillet, Robinet, Diderot, and 

 Bonnet. Again, the rudiments of the monistic idea 

 of the psychic properties of all matter, foreshadowed 

 by Empedocles, are sefen revived by Maupertuis and 

 Diderot. The difficulty of origin has been avoided 

 by the assumption of primordial minute masses, 

 which we have seen developed from the ' soft germ ' 

 of Aristotle, to the ' vesicles ' and ' filaments ' of 

 Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, Oken, and 

 finally into our primordial protoplasm. 



To the inquiry : Where did life first appear ? we 

 find the answer, ' in the sea,' given by Thales, 

 Anaximander, and Maillet ; ' between sea and land,' 

 is the answer of Anaximenes, Diogenes, Democritus, 

 and Oken; 'from the earth,' is the solitary reply of 

 Lucretius. Now we are too wise to answer it. For 

 the succession of life we have followed the ' ascend- 

 ing scale ' of Aristotle, Bruno, Leibnitz, and others, 

 until Buffon realized its inadequacy, and Lamarck 

 substituted the simile of the branching tree. Of 

 man as the summit of the scale, and still in process 



