FUNCTION AND ENVIRONMENT 185 



series from polyp to man and an age-long 

 movement towards increased perfection. 

 Static conceptions, however, prevailed, with 

 some rare exceptions, through the long 

 interval between Aristotle and Bacon, who 

 was one of the first to think definitely about 

 the mutability of species. But after the 

 Renaissance it was among the " philosophers," 

 not among naturalists, that the evolution 

 idea began again to live and move. The 

 first naturalist to give a broad and concrete 

 expression to the evolutionist doctrine of 

 descent was Buffon (1707-1788). Erasmus 

 Darwin (1731-1802), Charles Darwin's grand- 

 father, was another firm evolutionist, prob- 

 ably influenced by Buffon, and it is very 

 interesting to observe how much of the 

 argument in his " Zoonomia " might stand 

 to-day. Lamarck (1744-1829) was above 

 all thoroughgoing in his evolutionism ; and 

 Haeckel rightly speaks of his " Philosophic 

 Zoologique " as " the first connected and 

 thoroughly logical exposition of the theory of 

 descent." 



Besides the three old masters, as we may 

 call them, Buffon, Erasmus Darwin and 

 Lamarck, there came other quite convinced 

 pre-Darwinian evolutionists Treviranus, 

 Etienne Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, Goethe, Robert 



