46 THE EVOLUTIONARY THEORY 



sudden creations, as descriptive of the origin of things. 

 The German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, broached 

 the theory of a development of all things out of prim- 

 itive nehulcE in obedience to physical forces and laws. 

 ShelHng regarded nature as vital rather than mechan- 

 ical, and as a process of organic self-evolution. Hegel 

 maintained that God reaHzes Himself in the evolution 

 of the world through the three stages of mechanical, 

 physical, and organic development. History, he 

 said, begins with spirit, which determines subsequent 

 evolution. 



The early appearance of such forms of thought, and 

 their wide prevalence, were the natural and inevitable 

 result of men's observation of the phenomena of growth 

 in individual organisms, and of the gradation of species 

 in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. But previous 

 to the development of modern biological science, evo- 

 lutionary theories were necessarily conjectural; and 

 they could not gain a serious foothold so long as no 

 credible explanation of the method of evolution was 

 forthcoming. Moreover, up to Paley's time, modern 

 theologians and scientists alike beheved in the fixity of 

 species. With a very few exceptions the notion that 

 species undergo mutation was confined to speculative 

 philosophers.^ The older allegorical interpretation of 

 Genesis was without support, and theologians natu- 

 rally read existing science into the biblical account of 



1 The author of the scientific doctrine of the fixity of species was 

 John Ray, a younger contemporary of Milton. It was accepted by 

 Linnaeus and Cuvier and became a scientific postulate. See V. F. 

 Storr, Development, pp. 36, 37. 



