HISTORY OF EVOLUTION n 



Is the struggle for existence, in the sense of war, 

 or indeed in any sense, a scientific law ? Let us turn 

 to the history of zoological science. The idea that all 

 the varied structures in the world, the divergent 

 forms of metals and minerals, of trees and herbs and 

 all the animal host that peoples the earth and the air 

 and the waters, that all these had arisen from a 

 primitive unformed material was known to the 

 Greeks and Romans long before the story of creation 

 in the Old Testament was accepted as an authori- 

 tative account. After many centuries, during which 

 scientific thought was stifled by theological dogma- 

 tism, the theory of evolution, notably in its application 

 to the species of animals, began to reappear. Buffon, 

 and Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles 

 Darwin, had stated in the clearest way the possi- 

 bility that species had not been created independently, 

 but had arisen from other species. Lamarck had 

 worked out a doctrine of descent in full detail and 

 had regarded it as the foundation of the science of 

 biology. Herbert Spencer, writing in 1852, six 

 years before the famous session of the Linnaean 

 Society to which Charles Darwin and A. R. Wallace 

 simultaneously communicated the outlines of their 

 theories, had strenuously insisted on the evolution 

 of organic forms. Huxley himself, on the anatomi- 

 cal side, had been working gradually towards a con- 

 ception of the world of life past and present, as a 

 single family tree growing up from the simplest 

 possible roots and gradually dividing first into two 

 main stems, the vegetable and animal kingdoms, 

 and then into the endless series of ramifications repre- 

 sented by living animals and plants. He had been 



