914 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



naturalists. As Osborn says: "It is a very striking fact that the basis 

 of our modern methods of studying the Evolution problem was 

 estabHshed not by the early naturalists, nor by the speculative 

 writers, but by the Philosophers." He refers to Bacon, Descartes, 

 Leibnitz, Hume, Kant, Lessing, Herder, and Schelling. "They alone 

 were upon the main track of modern thought." Leibnitz and Kant 

 were much nearer to Darwin than were mystically-minded naturalists 

 like Lorenz Oken (1779-185 1). The roll of honour of pioneer evolu- 

 tionists has been unnecessarily crowded. 



PRE-DARWINIAN BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTIONISTS.— The first 

 naturalist of distinction to give a broad and concrete exposition of 

 Organic Evolution was Buffon (1707-88); but it is interesting to 

 notice that his contemporary Linnaeus (1707-78), although 

 protagonist of the counter-doctrine of the fixity of species, went the 

 length of admitting (in 1762) that new species might arise by inter- 

 crossing or hybridisation. This was a sign of the breaking-up of the 

 ice. Buffon had a splendid genius, which he mistakenly called 

 "a supreme capacity for taking pains"; he was a disciplined 

 mathematician, who translated Newton's Fluxions) he took all 

 Nature for his province, and had evolutionist views not only of 

 plants and animals, but of the solar system and of the earth's 

 sculpturing as well; he was strongly convinced of the unity of Nature 

 and of V enchainement des etres. Unfortunately his position is 

 somewhat obscured and weakened by his apparent — deliberate or 

 timid — vacillation between his own scientific conclusions and the 

 orthodoxy of the Sorbonne. But he realised (i) the struggle for 

 existence and the elimination of the unfit, (2) the influence of isola- 

 tion and artificial selection, and (3) the modifying action of changes 

 in food, climate, and surrounding influences in general. As regards 

 the factors in the process of Organic Evolution, Buffon's general 

 position might be indicated by calling him an environmentalist : thus 

 also a main founder of ecology. 



Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), evidently influenced by Buffon, 

 was a thoroughgoing evolutionist, believing that all the diverse forms 

 of plants and animals were descended from a few ancestral forms, 

 perhaps even from one "vital filament". He thought that evolu- 

 tionary change was mainly due to the exertions which living 

 creatures make to preserve or better themselves. Animals are driven 

 to endeavour by hunger, love, and the need of protection. Thus 

 Erasmus Darwin's chief factor in evolution was change of function, 

 not of surroundings. "From their first rudiment, or primordium, to 

 the termination of their lives, all animals undergo perpetual trans- 

 formations; which are in part produced by their own exertions in 

 consequence of their desires and aversions, of their pleasures and 

 their pains, or of irritations, or of associations; and many of these 



