EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTIONISTS 167 



the fixity of characters or by the fact that no 

 such metamorphoses had ever been witnessed. 



Yet in all this fiction we find buried two sug- 

 gestions of value. De Maillet claims for the sci- 

 entist the right to search into Nature direct for 

 her secrets. He finds in the world proofs that the 

 days of Genesis were great epochs of time, and 

 he suggests in his metamorphoses, absurd as they 

 are, the idea of the modification of organisms by 

 environment and habit, and the transmission of 

 these modifications to the descendants; in other 

 words, he advocates the 'transmission of acquired 

 adaptations' and is in a limited sense a precursor 

 of Erasmus Darwin and of Lamarck. 



De Maupertuis (1698-1759) 



Peter Louis Moreau de Maupertuis was a 

 French mathematician and astronomer of consid- 

 erable reputation in his day. As one of the most 

 prominent members of the eighteenth-century 

 French circle in Berlin, he was elected president 

 of the Berlin Academy in 1746. 



His contributions to the evolution idea are 

 pointed out by Perrier.^ We see in them the in- 

 fluence of Leibnitz, and learn that the reputation 

 of Maupertuis suffered from his having bor- 

 rowed other ideas of the German philosopher in 



1 Edmond Perrier: La Philosophie Zoologique avant Darwin. 



