ANTICIPATION AND INTERPRETATION 9 



We are now taking our uncertain steps in search 

 of the separate causes or coefficients of this law, 

 and cannot foresee when all of these will be dis- 

 covered. 



^Before and after Darwin' will always be the 

 ante et post urbcm conditam of biological his- 

 tory. Before Darwin, the theory; after Darwin, 

 the causes. 



We remember that there are usually three 

 stages in connection with the discovery of a law 

 of Nature : first, that of dim suggestion in pure 

 speculation or rash anticipation, with eyes closed 

 to facts ; second, that of clear statement as a ten- 

 tative or working hypothesis in an explanation 

 of certain facts ; and finally, the proof or demon- 

 stration. Darwin came in for the proof, profiting 

 richly by the hard struggles of his predecessors 

 over the first two stages. Lamarck later rose in 

 popular knowledge and esteem as having pro- 

 pounded the principle of Evolution, but among 

 his contemporaries and predecessors in France, 

 Germany, and England, we find Buffon, Eras- 

 mus Darwin, Goethe, Treviranus, and searching 

 for their inspiration, we are led back to the nat- 

 ural philosophers, beginning with Bacon and 

 ending with Herder. Among these men we find 

 the second birth or renaissance of the idea, and 

 among the Greeks its first birth. 



Evolution as a natural explanation of the 



