n FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



of the history of the earth and of life in the con- 

 temporary philosophy and literature. 



Singularly enough, Milton's epics appeared 

 shortly after the time of Suarez, exerting an 

 equally profound influence upon English Prot- 

 estant thought, so that Huxley has aptly termed 

 Special Creation 'the Miltonic hypothesis.' Thus 

 the opportunity of a free, unchecked develop- 

 ment of the evolution idea out of natural history 

 was lost. 



During the long Middle Ages, the evolution 

 idea made no advance. Finally it began to ret- 

 rogress, when Greek natural philosophy shared 

 in the general suppression of the rationalistic 

 movement of thought of Arabic origin. Later the 

 hard and fast conceptions and definitions of 'spe- 

 cies,' developed in the rapid rise of systematic 

 botany and zoology by the genius of Linngeus, 

 were grafted upon the Mosaic account of the 

 Creation, establishing a 'special creation' theory 

 for the origin of each species. Later still, when it 

 was discovered in palaeontology that species of 

 different kinds had succeeded each other in time, 

 the 'special' theory was again remodeled to cover 

 a succession of creations extending down almost 

 to the present day. Thus a purely ecclesiastical 

 dogma developed into a pseudo-scientific theory 

 full of inconsistencies but fostered by ecclesias- 

 ticism and stoutly maintained by certain brilliant 

 zoologists, botanists and palaeontologists of the 



