THEORIES OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION 



Here, clearly enough, is the idea of evolution. .But 

 in that day there was little proof forthcoming of its 

 validity that could satisfy any one but a poet, and 

 when Erasmus Darwin died, in 1802, the idea of trans- 

 mutation of species was still but an unsubstantiated 

 dream. 



It was a dream, however, which was not confined to 

 Goethe and Darwin. Even earlier the idea had come 

 more or less vaguely to another great dreamer and 

 worker of Germany, Immanuel Kant, and to several 

 great Frenchmen, including De Maillet, Maupertuis, 

 Robinet, and the famous naturalist Buffon a man 

 who had the imagination of a poet, though his message 

 was couched in most artistic prose. Not long after the 

 middle of the eighteenth century Buffon had put for- 

 ward the idea of transmutation of species, and he re- 

 iterated it from time to time from then on till his death 

 in 1 788. But the time was not yet ripe for the idea of 

 transmutation of species to burst its bonds. 



And yet this idea, in a modified or undeveloped form, 

 had taken strange hold upon the generation that was 

 upon the scene at the close of the eighteenth century. 

 Vast numbers of hitherto unknown species of animals 

 had been recently discovered in previously unexplored 

 regions of the globe, and the wise men were sorely puz- 

 zled to account for the disposal of all of these at the 

 time of the deluge. It simplified matters greatly to 

 suppose that many existing species had been developed 

 since the episode of the ark by modification of the 

 original pairs. The remoter bearings of such a theory 

 were overlooked for the time, and the idea that Amer- 

 ican animals and birds, for example, were modified de- 



149 



