8 ORGANIC EVOLUTION 



species of animals and plants, as we know them, are 

 not immutable; that they have been gradually evolved, 

 through many ages, from simpler and simpler forms, 

 and that they are still so evolving. The account given 

 in Genesis has been traced to its Babylonian origin, 

 and is admitted to be untrue and worthless. The 

 history of this change of opinion is so interesting 

 and important that it falls here to be discussed. In 

 a philosophic account of any subject whatever, the 

 history of our knowledge of it must take an indis- 

 pensable and logically preliminary place. 



Many scattered thinkers in the past had questioned 

 the theory of special creation. This theory was not 

 held by the great Greeks. Giordano Bruno, burnt 

 for his beliefs in 1600, had disbelieved it ; but 

 none of these had made any permanent impress 

 upon biological thought. Towards the end of the 

 eighteenth century, however, there lived a versatile 

 physician, named Erasmus Darwin, whose interests 

 included poetry and biology. It seemed to him that 

 animal and vegetable species must have undergone 

 modification in the course of ages; but he was not 

 equal to the task of formulating his views in any 

 precise or compelling manner. Then it happened 

 that an elderly Frenchman, Jean Baptiste de 

 Lamarck, was appointed by the Parisian authorities 

 to a post concerned with biology, a study with which 

 he had hitherto had no acquaintance. Merely 

 mentioning the names of Kant and Goethe and 

 Buffon as more or less explicit forerunners of the 

 doctrine of organic evolution, we may devote special 

 attention to the work of Lamarck. In the year 

 1809, just half a century before the date which was 



