INTRODUCTION. 3 



tions at all, if we speak of Darwinism in the 

 restricted sense and not as all-embracing. Others 

 are genuine, yet they consist of speculative ideas 

 which had been retold or rediscovered several times 

 over, as in the case of the law of Survival of the 

 Fittest. 



The estimates I have reached as to several of 

 the founders of the idea are therefore different 

 from those advanced by others. By considering 

 together all the historic stages of the development 

 even in a brief manner, we can trace the continuity, 

 the increasing momentum of the idea, and conse- 

 quently the increasing indebtedness to previous 

 suggestion. We can see how many of the prophe- 

 cies were themselves foretold. Most obvious is the 

 fact that Greek speculations and .suggestions were 

 borrowed and used over and over again as if origi- 

 nal, continuity in the lesser ideas which cluster 

 around Evolution being quite as marked as in the 

 main idea. To fully follow out all such genetic 

 threads would, however, require a far more ex- 

 haustive research than this aims to be. 



Apart from suggestion we meet with many re- 

 markable coincidences in the lines of independent 

 and even simultaneous discovery, notably those 

 between Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, between 

 Lamarck and Treviranus, before we reach the 

 crowning and most exceptional case of Darwin 

 and Wallace. At different periods similar facts 

 were leading men to similar conclusions, and we 



