SPECULATIVE EVOLUTIONISTS. IO/ 



of Robinet, one of the popular scientists of his time; 

 and finally of Oken, professor of natural history in 

 the University of Zurich during the first third of 

 the present century. Some surprise may be felt at 

 my placing Oken in this group, for his Physio-Phi- 

 losophie, and his ' Ur-Schleim Theorie,' are considered 

 by some to raise him high as a prophet of Modern 

 Evolution. 



Yet Oken is a fair exponent; in his 'sea-foam' 

 and ' spontaneous generation ' vagaries we find him 

 drawing from such an ancient and imaginative 

 authority as Anaximander. In fact, when we ana- 

 lyze his contributions we find that they actually 

 represent the last survivals of Greek Evolution with 

 a veneer of eighteenth-century progress. When we 

 read him through and through we see that he is about 

 as truly an anachronism as old Claude Duret of 

 1609. 



This is more or less true of all these speculators. 

 They were not actually in the main Evolution 

 movement ; they were either out of date or upon the 

 side tracks of thought. They can be sharply distin- 

 guished from both the naturalists and philosophers 

 in the fact that their speculations advanced without 

 the support of observation, and without the least 

 deference to inductive canons. Several of them 

 were very popular writers, and unchecked specula- 

 tion 'was so much their characteristic that they 

 undoubtedly retarded the development of the true 

 Evolution idea by drawing ridicule upon all genu- 



