168 Charles Darwin. 



theory finding at this time a brilliant advocate in 

 Harvey, who is better known as the discoverer of 

 the circulation of the blood. In the early part of the 

 eighteenth century many naturalists combated Har- 

 vey and the theory of his day, and the term evolu- 

 tion was adopted as defining the belief of such 

 naturalists as Bonnet, who claimed that in life 

 nothing really new was created, but that there was 

 an expansion or growth from the invisible to the 

 visible ; an unfolding, as in the growth of a chicken, 

 from the faint germ within the egg. The term evo- 

 lution, from the Latin e, out, and volvo, to roll, 

 literally to unfold, implies this. The idea opposes 

 direct creation, and evidences of it are found among 

 the very ancient myths. Thus an old Egyptian 

 belief was that all life sprang successively from an 

 egg, and that there had been repeated destructions 

 of the world. The doctrine of Thales was that every 

 thing was originally in a fluid state, and had " pro- 

 gressed " to more substantial forms. Anaxagoras 

 believed and taught that in the beginning every thing 

 was atomic, out of which order and arrangement 

 were brought by some infinite power. In later times 

 (1693) Leibnitz first propounded the belief in in- 

 organic evolution, stating that the world first existed 

 in a fluid state. De Maillet, Wright, Lambert, and 

 Kaul voiced the idea, while Herschel, La Place, and 

 others gave it further and more lucid elaboration. 

 In 1749 Buff on published a natural history, in which 

 he evinced a belief in the transmutation of species. 



Buffon was the naturalist of the day in the time of 

 Louis XV. and Louis XVI. a period somewhat 



