A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



scendants of Old-World forms the jaguar of the leop- 

 ard, the puma of the lion, and so on became a current 

 belief with that class of humanity who accept almost 

 any statement as true that harmonizes with their preju- 

 dices without realizing its implications. 



Thus it is recorded with eclat that the discovery of 

 the close proximity of America at the northwest with 

 Asia removes all difficulties as to the origin of the 

 Occidental faunas and floras, since Oriental species 

 might easily have found their way to America on the 

 ice, and have been modified as we find them by " the 

 well-known influence of climate." And the persons 

 who gave expression to this idea never dreamed of its 

 real significance. In truth, here was the doctrine of 

 evolution in a nutshell, and, because its ultimate bear- 

 ings were not clear, it seemed the most natural of doc- 

 trines. But most of the persons who advanced it would 

 have turned from it aghast could they have realized its 

 import. As it was, however, only here and there a 

 man like Buffon reasoned far enough to inquire what 

 might be the limits of such assumed transmutation; 

 and only here and there a Darwin or a Goethe reached 

 the conviction that there are no limits. 



LAMARCK VERSUS CUVIER 



And even Goethe and Darwin had scarcely passed 

 beyond that tentative stage of conviction in which they 

 held the thought of transmutation of species as an an- 

 cillary belief not ready for full exposition. There was 

 one of their contemporaries, however, who, holding 

 the same conception, was moved to give it full explica- 

 tion. This was the friend and disciple of Buffon, Jean 



