156 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



direct fruits of hypothesis or deductive science 

 above inductive science. This might be termed a 

 reversion to Greek natural philosophy or meth- 

 ods of thought brilliant but unproductive of 

 fixed results. 



Successively the natural philosophers Des- 

 cartes, Leibnitz and Kant laid afresh secure 

 foundations for the idea of evolution of life, in- 

 cluding that of man himself, and paved the way 

 for the natural philosophy of Linnaeus and of 

 Buffon, who during the second half of the eigh- 

 teenth century in turn laid the true foundations 

 in observation for the work of Darwin in the 

 second half of the nineteenth century. 



