FUNCTION AND ENVIRONMENT 185 



series from polyp to man and an age-long 

 movement towards increased perfection. 

 Static conceptions, however, prevailed, with 

 some rare exceptions, through the long* 

 interval between Aristotle and Bacon, who 

 wa.s nnp of..tlift first to think definitely about 

 Urn mutability of species. But after_the 

 Renaissance it was among the "philos- 



s," nnt grnrmg 



.^.TI JTIOV 



. 



The first naturalist to give ajjrpad and con- 

 crete expression to ' 



(1707-1788) . Eraismus 

 Dj^win (1731-180^), Charles Darwin's 

 grandfather, was another firm evolutionist, 

 probably influenced by Buff on, and it is very 

 interesting to observe how much of the 

 argument in his "Zoonomia" might stand 

 to-day. Lamarck (1744^1S22X-- WRS ^bnyp 

 all thorrmghgning in"his pynlntinniann; and 

 Haeckel rightly speaks of his "Philosophic 

 Zoologique" as "the first connected and 

 thoroughly logical exposition of the theory of 

 descent. " 



Besides the three old masters, as we may 

 call them, l^uffqn, Erasmus Darwin and 

 Lamarck, there came other quite convinced 

 ^re-Darwinian evolutionists Tix.yira.nus, 

 Etienne .> Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Goethe, 

 Robert Chambers, and many others. Dar- 



