RISE OF EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 



419 



commentaries upon creation, which accord very closely with 

 the modern theistic conception of evolution. If the ortho- 

 doxy of Augustine had remained the teaching of the Church, 

 the final establishment of evolution would have come far 

 earlier than it did, certainly during the eighteenth century 

 instead of the nineteenth century, and the bitter controversy 

 over this truth of nature would never have arisen." 



The conception of special creation brought into especial 

 prominence upon the Continent by Suarez was taken up by 

 John Milton in his great epic Paradise Lost, in which he 

 gave a picture of creation that molded into specific form 

 the opinion of the English-speaking clergy and of the 

 masses who read his book. When the doctrine of organic 

 evolution was announced, it came into conflict with this 

 particular idea; and, as Huxley has very pointedly remarked, 

 the new theory of organic evolution found itself in conflict 

 with the Miltonic, rather than the Mosaic cosmology. All this 

 represents an interesting phase in intellectual development. 



Forerunners of Lamarck. — We now take up the imme- 

 diate predecessors of Lamarck. Those to be mentioned are 

 Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Goethe. 



Buffon (1707-1788) (Fig. 116), although of a more philo- 

 sophical mind than many of his contemporaries, was not a 

 true investigator. That is, he left no technical papers or 

 contributions to science. From 1739 to the time of his deatli 

 he was the superintendent of the Jardin du Roi. He was a 

 man of elegance, with an assured position in society. He 

 was a delightful writer, a circumstance that enabled him to 

 make natural history popular. It is said that the advance 

 sheets of Buffon's Histoire Naturelle were to be found on the 

 tables of the boudoirs of ladies of fashion. In that work he 

 suggested the idea that the different forms of life were grad- 

 ually produced, but his timidity and his prudence led him 

 to be obscure in what he said. 



