A HISTORICAL SKETCH 



OF THE PROGRESS OF OPINION ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



PREVIOUSLY TO THE PUBLICATION OF THE FIRST EDITION 



OF THIS WORK 



I WILL here give a brief sketch of the progress of 

 opinion on the Origin of Species. Until recently the 

 grea^in^jorrtj_ji£_-iiatttKJi&^ species were 



immutable productions, and had been separately created. 

 This view has been ably maintained by many authors. 

 Some few naturalists, on the other hand, have believed 

 that species undergo modification, and that the existing 

 forms of life are the descendants by true generation of 

 pre-existing forms. Passing over allusions to the subject 

 in the classical writers,' the first author who in modern 



' Aristotle, in his "Physicse Auscultationes" (lib. 2, cap. 8, s. 2) after re- 

 marking that rain does not fall in order to make the corn grow, any more than 

 it falls to spoil the farmer's corn when threshed out of doors, applies the same 

 argument to organization; and adds (as translated by Mr. Clair Grece, who 

 first pointed out the passage to me), "So what hinders the different parts [of 

 the body] from having this merely accidental relation in nature? as the teeth, 

 for example, grow by necessity, the front ones sliarp, adapted for dividing, and 

 the grinders flat, and serviceable for masticating the food; since they were not 

 made for the sake of this, but it was the result of accident. And in like 

 manner as to the other parts in which tliere appears to exist an adaptation to 

 an end. Wlieresoever, therefore, all things together (that ia, all the parts of 

 one whole) happened like as if they were made for the sake of something, these 

 were preserved, having been appropriately conscituted by an internal spon- 

 taneity; and whatsoever things were not thus constituted, perished, and still 

 perish." We here see the principle of natural selection shadowed forth, but 

 how little Aristotle fully comprehended the principle is shown by his remarks 

 on the formation of the teeth. 



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