EVOLUTION BEFORE DARWIN 13 



living material, displayed the elementary functions 

 of life in the same fashion, and were creatures of 

 the same order. 



Thus, in the middle of last century, the conception 

 of evolution was much more than in the air ; it was 

 definitely inspiring zoological thought both on its 

 technical and on its philosophical sides. But there 

 are two points about the position worthy of special 

 attention. First, the infiltrating idea of evolution 

 was extremely general in its character, and if Huxley 

 or any of his associates who were technical zoologists, 

 had been interrogated as to their views on the fixity 

 of species, most certainly they would not have de- 

 clared themselves with any confidence on one side or 

 the other. The second point is that the pre-Dar- 

 winian conception of evolution, whether it were half 

 unconsciously held as by Huxley, or consciously 

 urged as by Herbert Spencer (and earlier by Buffon 

 and Lamarck), was that of a calm and orderly 

 process, a patient growth, the unfolding, so to say, of 

 an inevitable plan, and not in the least as any kind 

 of turbulent struggle, or of warfare between indivi- 

 dual and individual, between species and species. I 

 think it a fair assumption, that if Darwin and Wallace 

 had not lived, this conception of evolution would 

 have taken its due place in biology long before the 

 present day. 



Then, in 1859, there came the publication of The 

 Origin of Species, and whatever might have hap- 

 pened otherwise, we know as a historical fact that 

 the world came to its actual belief in organic evolu- 

 tion through Darwin. Huxley and his contempo- 

 raries were more than prepared to accept evolution, 



