THE EVOLUTIONISTS OF THE 

 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 



The Speculative Evolutionists: Duret, Kircher, de Mail- 

 let, de Maupertuis, Diderot, Bonnet, Robinet, Oken — The 

 Great Naturalists: Linnaeus, Buffon, Erasmus Darwin. 



BESIDES the great natural philosophers be- 

 tween the times of Bacon and of Kant who 

 regenerated the evolution idea on the sound basis 

 of observation, we distinguish during the latter 

 part of the seventeenth and the w hole of the eigh- 

 teenth century two other classes of evolutionists : 

 first, the speculative writers from Duret to Oken, 

 partly philosophers, partly naturalists, partly of 

 other professions, who resuscitated some of the 

 crude, as well as some of the valuable scientific, 

 hypotheses of the Greeks ; and second, the great 

 naturalists of the eighteenth century, who, with 

 the philosophers, laid the real foundations of the 

 modern evolution idea. 



The Speculatrte Evolutionists (1609-1851) 



Not yet complete are the lists of purely specu- 

 lative writers who toyed with the evolution idea. 

 Among the curiosities of evolution literature 

 may be included the works of Duret, the mayor 



159 



