io CHARLES DARWIN 



with the keen vision of the poet and the calm eye of 

 the philosopher uniquely combined, discerned indepen- 

 dently as by a lightning flash the identical idea of the 

 origin of kinds by modification of pre-existent organisms. 

 'We may assert without hesitation,' says that great 

 nebulous thinker and observer, 'that all the more 

 perfect organic natures, such as fishes, amphibians, 

 birds and mammals, with man at their head, were formed 

 at first on one original type, which still daily changes 

 and modifies its form by propagation.' In England, 

 twelve months earlier, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, Charles 

 Darwin's grandfather (of whom more anon), published 

 his ' Zoonomia,' a treatise on the laws of animal life, in 

 which he not only adopted Buffon's theory of the 

 origin of species by evolution, but also laid down as 

 the chief cause of such development the actions and 

 needs of the animals themselves. According to Dr. 

 Erasmus Darwin, animals came to vary from one 

 another chiefly because they were always altering their 

 habits and voluntarily accommodating themselves to new 

 actions and positions in life. His work produced com- 

 paratively little effect upon the world at large in his 

 own time, but it had immense influence upon the next 

 great prophet of evolution, Lamarck, and through 

 Lamarck on Lyell, Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, 

 and the modern school of evolutionists generally. We 

 shall consider his views in greater detail when we pass 

 from the spiritual to the physical antecedents of Charles 

 Darwin. 



It was in 1801 that Lamarck first gave to the world 

 his epoch-making speculations and suggestions on the 

 origin of species ; and from that date to the day of his 



