LINNAEUS TO LAMARCK 25 



niche or cranny in the material universe. The 

 only difference between progress and evolu- 

 tion is that evolution is a more inclusive term, 

 including as it does phenomena which we 

 should call retrogressive. 



The men who laid the foundations of 

 modern knowledge, and imparted sense and 

 force to hitherto meaningless terms, were they 

 who threw aside theological phantasms and 

 metaphysical speculations and set themselves 

 the task of gathering the facts and ascertaining 

 the laws of the real — the material — world. 

 This is the method of science, and it is to this 

 method that we owe all our knowledge of 

 world problems. 



For more than a thousand years this method 

 was practically suspended. Any attempt, dur- 

 ing that period, to make use of it was rigor- 

 ously suppressed, except among the pagan 

 Arabians. Biological science stood still, 

 scarcely even marking time. Says Packard 

 "After Aristotle, no epoch-making zoologist 

 arose until Linnaeus was born," a yawning 

 chasm of thirteen hundred years. 



Linnaeus, born 1707, in Sweden, was the 

 greatest naturalist of his time and might have 

 done greater things for evolutionary ideas had 

 it not been for the theological influences which 

 restrained him. But^ hindered as he was, he 



