8 FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 



were Lamarck and Saint-Hilaire, and with them was 



he who has been called " the sanest of men " Goethe. 



There had been, they thought, in reality 



no new era and no new creation only a 

 Lamarck. ' 



gradual change from old to new, from 



old life under old conditions to new life with new envi- 

 ronment. The natural tendency toward progress in life, 

 the influence of the creatures' own desires and needs, 

 the attempt of creatures to fit themselves to new sur- 

 roundings were, they thought, in some way the causes 

 of the changes in forms which Cuvier ascribed to new 

 creations. 



But there were some facts not easy to explain on 

 these suppositions, and the causes of change suggested 

 by Lamarck seemed to most thinkers of his time entirely 

 disproportionate to the changes themselves. Again, the 

 weight of the great names of Linnaeus and Cuvier rested 

 on the other side, and authority has its weight in science 

 as elsewhere when we come to estimate the relative 

 probability of different conclusions. Besides, not enough 

 of fact was in anybody's possession to take these dis- 

 cussions out of the region of speculation. There is rea- 

 son to believe that Cuvier himself doubted his own dic- 

 tum as to the special creation, unchanging permanence, 

 and ultimate extinction of species. But Cuvier saw no 

 way to any better view, and he believed that the advance- 

 ment of science would come through the gathering and 

 sorting of facts rather than from any hypotheses, how- 

 ever ingenious, as to the origin of present conditions. 



But the permanence and persistence of type which 



Cuvier had demonstrated came to be a necessary ele- 



ment in the answer to the still vexed 



r f q uestion of the ori s in of s P ecies - And 



this fact of unity formed the corner- 

 stone in the answer given by Agassiz. The species rep- 



