98 THE PROGRESS OF SCIKNCK n 



eighteenth century ; all these tended to show that 

 the fabric of the earth itself implied the continu- 

 ation of processes of natural causation for a period 

 of time as great, in relation to human history, as 

 the distances of the heavenly bodies from us are, 

 in relation to terrestrial standards of measure- 

 ment. The abyss of time began to loom as large 

 as the abyss of space. And this revelation to 

 sight and touch, of a link here and a link there of 

 a practically infinite chain of natural causes and 

 effects, prepared the way, as perhaps nothing else 

 has done, for the modern form of the ancient 

 theory of evolution. 



In the beginning of the eighteenth century, De 

 Maillet made the first serious attempt to apply the 

 doctrine to the living world. In the latter part of 

 it, Erasmus Darwin, Goethe, Treviranus, and La- 

 marck took up the work more vigorously and with 

 better qualifications. The question of special 

 creation, or evolution, lay at the bottom of the 

 fierce disputes which broke out in the French 

 Academy between Cuvier and St-Hilaire; and, 

 for a time, the supporters of biological evolution 

 were silenced, if not answered, by the alliance of 

 the greatest naturalist of the age with their eccle- 

 siastical opponents. Catastrophism, a short-sighted 

 teleology, and a still more short-sighted othodoxy, 

 joined forces to crush evolution. 



Lyell and 1'oulettScrope, in this country, resumed 

 the work of the Italians and of Hutton ; and the 



