248 DARWIN. 



of becoming more perfect in his endowments, we 

 learn from Empedocles, Aristotle, Robinet, Diderot, 

 Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, and Treviranus. 



Man's origin and descent has always been of the 

 first interest to man himself. The idea of his slow 

 development is suggested by the crude observation 

 of Anaximander, and takes its more scientific form 

 in Lucretius, Bruno, and Leibnitz. Man's relation 

 to other primates as a result of evolution is de- 

 veloped by Bruno, Leibnitz, Buffon, Kant, Herder. 

 Bruno perceives the importance of the tool-bearing 

 hands, and most interesting is the appreciation by 

 Buffon, Helvetius, and Erasmus Darwin, that the 

 opposition of the thumb, rendering its bearers fittest 

 to survive, may have originated as a happy accident. 



Of the greatest moment of all, is our pursuit of 

 the problem of Adaptation as it first presented itself 

 to Empedocles, Democritus, Anaxagoras ; and 

 second, as it became connected with Causation 

 in the minds of Aristotle, Buffon, Kant, Erasmus 

 Darwin, Goethe, and Charles Darwin. Around the 

 solution of this problem we have seen centre the 

 development of four conceptions ; namely, of ' en- 

 vironment,' ' struggle for existence,' ' variation,' and 

 ' survival of the fittest.' 



We have seen first how ideas of Adaptation 

 in immutable types were recast into the grander 

 Adaptation in mutable types under changing en- 

 vironment ; also how the full modern conception of 

 Adaptation slowly arose through philosophical 



