A NEW THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES." 



Bv A. Dastre. 



Nearly half a centui\Y has elapsed since the appearance of Darwin's 

 work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, It is 

 unnecessary to recall the commotion which that publication produced 

 and the effects which followed. It was the signal for a profound revo- 

 lution affecting- the natural sciences, secondarily other sciences, and 

 even the mental attitude of individuals. The idea of the evolution of 

 living forms, of their descent, or rather of their transformation, 

 already advanced by Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was rescued 

 from the ol)livion or the indifference in which it had hitherto remained 

 and was imposed, in a manner, on almost the whole seientitic world. 

 At present it is accepted with but slight opposition. It is, to be sure, 

 onl}^ an h^^pothesis; but, as it is the only one that has any rational 

 basis, it becomes, because of that fact, almost a necessity. As M. 

 Yves Delage says: 



If there were a scientific hypothesis other than descent by which the origin of 

 species could be explained, a number of naturalists would abandon, as insufficiently 

 demonstrated, the opinions which they now hold. 



This may be true, but there is no other scientific hypothesis, and 

 the naturalists of to-day, willing or not, are 4;ransf ormists — that is to 

 say, they are persuaded that living forms are not unrelated to each 

 other, invariable, isolated, brought into existence by special acts of 

 creation, and without any bond of union between them, but that they 

 are, on the contrary, related — that is to say, derived one from the other. 



Darwinism did not, however, consist merely in an affirmation of 

 transformism, for this had alread}' been advanced prior to Darwin. 

 Transformism certainly arose from the application to the natural 

 sciences of the idea of " (lontinuit}' " introduced into science by the 

 mathematicians of the eighteenth century. We may thus explain the 

 course taken b}^ that idea as well as. the variations which it assumed. 

 The mathematicians passed it on to Buff'on, who was originally a 

 geometrician and who entered the Acadeni}' of Sciences as such; he in 

 turn transmitted it to Lamarck, who was one of his intimate friends, 

 and from him it passed to Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. It was, however, 



"Translated from the Revue des Deux IMondes for July 1, 1903, pp. 207-219. 



507 



