160 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



of a town in France, also of Kircher and Bon- 

 nami, two priests. Of greater interest are the 

 speculations of Maupertuis, a mathematician 

 and astronomer ; of Diderot, the political writer ; 

 of Bonnet, the eminent naturalist and author of 

 the 'evolution' (emboitement) of the germ hy- 

 pothesis; of de Maillet, French consul at Leg- 

 horn; of Bobinet, one of the popular scientists 

 of his time; and finally of Oken, professor of 

 natural history in the University of Zurich dur- 

 ing the first third of the nineteenth century. 



Some surprise may be felt at my placing Oken 

 in this group, for his Physio-Philosophie and his 

 Ur-Schleim Theorie are considered by some to 

 raise him high as a prophet of Modern Evolu- 

 tion. Yet Oken is a fair exponent of the errors 

 of purely speculative evolution ; in his 'sea-foam' 

 and 'spontaneous generation' vagaries we find 

 him drawing from such an ancient and imagina- 

 tive authority as Anaximander. In fact, when 

 we analyze his contributions we find that they 

 actually represent the last survivals of Greek 

 Evolution with a veneer of eighteenth-century 

 observation. When we read him through and 

 through we see that he is about as truly an 

 anachronism as old Claude Duret of 1609. 



This is more or less true of all these specu- 

 lators. They were not actually in the main move- 

 ment of evolution discovery; they were either out 



