16 EXPERIMENTAL EVOLUTION LECT. 



forms, "we must assume a new creation, which is 

 absurd" (p. 313). 



Some years after De Maillet, another French writer 

 gave utterance to more valuable notions concerning 

 evolution. This author was J. B. Robinet. There is but 

 little to interest us in his book, De la Nature, published 

 in 1 766 (four Svo volumes, Amsterdam,) but his Vues 

 philosophiques de la gradation naturelle des Formes de 

 FEtre, ou les Essais de la Nature qui apprend a faire 

 r Homme (1768, Amsterdam,) contain curious passages. 

 For instance, he clearly recognized the fact that all 

 animals are in many points similar, and that if the 

 similarity between any two animals at the opposed 

 ends of the organic scale is difficult to perceive when 

 they aie considered apart from the others, numerous 

 transitional forms occur, and are real connecting links 

 when the whole scale is taken into consideration. 



Robinet supposes that Nature has an aim, a con- 

 stant tendency towards perfection, and towards perfec- 

 tion of a given type. Since the beginning the aim of 

 Nature has been to prepare man, and the proofs 

 thereof are not wanting, according to Robinet. These 

 proofs are the numerous stones or fossils which bear a 

 more or less vague resemblance to the organs and 

 various parts of man, monstrous turnips and extra- 

 ordinary cabbages, in the form of a hand, a nose, or 

 an ear, or other parts of the body, whether internal or 



