1 8 ANTICIPA TION AND INTERPRE TA TION OF NA TURE. 



seventeenth century : " If the natural history extant, 

 though apparently of great bulk and variety, were 

 to be carefully weeded of its fables, antiquities, 

 quotations, frivolous disputes, philosophy, orna- 

 ments, it would shrink to a slender bulk." 



During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 

 valuable materials were slowly gathering for the 

 induction of Evolution. In the first revival of the 

 idea the advances made were mainly deductive, yet 

 each of the great philosophers of this period referred 

 to one or more observations, and clearly aimed to 

 establish a basis of fact for the mutability of species. 

 This rational method spread so rapidly that a 

 considerable part of the speculations of the natural- 

 ists Buffon and Erasmus Darwin, in the latter part 

 of the seventeenth century, was directly based upon 

 observation and was true interpretation. These 

 were by far the most logical thinkers among the 

 large number of eighteenth century evolution- 

 ists, who gave the imagination such free rein in 

 support of the idea that Evolution and the ' working 

 hypothesis ' together fell into disrepute. A school 

 that was professedly purely observational and induc- 

 tive was established by Linnaeus and Cuvier, and, 

 owing to the genius of these naturalists, gained such 

 ascendency that it was only after a bitter struggle 

 in the early part of the nineteenth century, that the 

 discredited working hypothesis acquired its true 

 place as an instrument of thought. The evolu- 

 tionists of the eighteenth and early part of the nine- 



