26 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



of Bacon; so it is not just that he should be cred- 

 ited with the revival of induction as apphed to 

 science during the seventeenth century; he was 

 rather the first to formulate and teach it. 



During the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 

 turies valuable materials were slowly gathering 

 for the induction of Evolution, in the rising sci- 

 ences of geology, zoology, botany, but especially 

 in comparative anatomy and palaeontology. The 

 observational method to discover a basis of fact 

 for the mutability rather than fixity of species 

 spread so rapidly that a considerable part of the 

 speculations of the naturalists Buif on and Eras- 

 mus Darwin in the latter part of the eighteenth 

 century was directly based upon observation and 

 was true interpretation. A school that was pro- 

 fessedly purely observational and inductive was 

 established by Linnaeus and Cuvier and, owing 

 to the genius of these naturalists, gained such as- 

 cendancy that it was only after a bitter struggle 

 in the early part of the nineteenth century that 

 the discredited working hypothesis of the mu- 

 tability of species acquired its true place as 

 an instrument of thought. The evolutionists of 

 the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth 

 century contended against great odds. They up- 

 held a theory as to the origin of life which could 

 not be established inductively in the existing 

 state of knowledge, and which even at the time 



