June 14, 1918] 



SCIENCE 



577 



plants which marked the centuries just pre- 

 ceding the year 1750. To Buffon and to 

 other less known writers of the eighteenth 

 ceuturj- belongs the credit for having first 

 promulgated the evolutionary theory in a 

 form which was scientific rather than phil- 

 osophical and which carried a measure of 

 conviction, despite its crudities and the 

 hampering of theological criticism. One 

 can not turn the pages of Buffon 's encyclo- 

 pedic work without a growing respect for 

 the knowledge of animal life there repre- 

 sented. Obviously, the foundation for 

 much of our comparative anatomy of ver- 

 tebrates was even then established. It is a 

 familiar story how Lamarck was the first 

 to offer a theory of the causes of evolu- 

 tion ; how he failed to make his case as 

 against the authority of Cuvier; how the 

 latter, although opposing evolution, ac- 

 cumulated some of our strongest evidence, 

 through his studies in comparative anat- 

 omy; and how von Baer supplemented 

 this by his work in embryology ; until in 

 Darwin's daj' there were ample facts at 

 hand for the establishment of the fact of 

 evolution, if not for the determination of 

 its causation. 



As Professor Lovejoj-' has pointed out, 

 evolution itself aside from its causes might 

 have been accepted, as the only reasonable 

 interpretation of the facts, at any time 

 after the year 1840. That it was not so ac- 

 cepted among thase who ridiculed the 

 "Vestiges of Creation," is a sad comment 

 upon the open-mindedness of science and 

 the psychology of conviction in its relation 

 to evidence. The storj^ that science hesi- 

 tated for lack of evidence, only adduced 

 bj- the "Origin of Species," does not rep- 

 resent the facts. Though we have inher- 



' Lovejoy, A. O., " The Argument for Organic 

 Evolution before ' The Origin of Species, ' ' ' Pop- 

 ular Science Monthly, November and December, 

 1909. 



ited this tradition from so clear a thinker 

 as Huxley, we should be anxious to replace 

 it with a frank avowal, that the two decades 

 following 1840 present a humiliating spec- 

 tacle to workers who pride themselves upon 

 the acceptance of doctrines whenever and 

 wherever the evidence is forthcoming. 

 The fact is that during the period in ques- 

 tion science may well be accused of shut- 

 ting its eyes to patent evidence. Darwin's 

 claim to distinction lies in his early recog- 

 nition of the evolutionary problem as at 

 the core of biological science, and in his 

 marshalling of facts for evolution and for 

 his theory of "Natural Selection" in a 

 manner that was overwhelming. The al- 

 most immediate acceptance, in biological 

 science, of Darwin's views and the spread 

 of the evolutionary concept to other fields 

 during the remaining years of the nine- 

 teenth century are well known. Evolution 

 has won its fight. We are here concerned 

 with its effects upon human thinking in the 

 past and its probable influences in the fu- 

 ture. 



The triumph of the evolutionary concep- 

 tion completed the overthrow of those older 

 ideas of the universe which culminated in 

 medieval theology. Evolution was the final 

 extension of that enlarging horizon dis- 

 closed by the theory of the earth's spheric- 

 ity and the Copernican theory of the solar 

 system, concepts which are indissolubly 

 united and which represent each a stride 

 forward in the face of diminishing resist- 

 ance. It went hard with Galileo, and so 

 would it have gone with Copernicus had 

 all the implications of his theory been rec- 

 ognized before his death. Buffon was not 

 in physical danger, though forced to re- 

 cant. Darwin, though heaped with abuse, 

 suffered not even inconvenience at the 

 hands of his critics. During the three cen- 

 turies involved, man's picture of himself 



