6 Professor Gregg WiUon on 



in the course of its life may be transmitted to its offspring. He 

 actually considered the possibility of the origin of new characters 

 and new species by chance variations and the survival of the 

 fittest varieties ; and he rejected this Darwinian theory, and 

 preferred to give credit to "an internal perfecting tendency," 

 M'hich was capable of driving organisms forward to give rise to 

 more perfect types. 



For many centuries the views of Aristotle were accepted. 

 Even in the early Christian Church his ideas prevailed, and 

 A.ugustine (353 — 430 A.D.) expressly states that the story of the 

 Creation in Genesis should not be taken literally ; that evolution 

 had been gradual ; and that even the bodily structure of man had 

 been a product of natural development. For something like 

 twelve centuries there was no important change in the Church's 

 teaching on this subject ; but in the 16th century Suarez and 

 others taught that the entire work of creation took place in six 

 days of twenty-four hours ; and till the middle of the nineteenth 

 century this was the prevalent opinion. Then came another 

 revolution in thought, largely due to the brilliant labours of 

 Charles Darwin ; and now there is practical unanimity among 

 educated men as to the fact of evolution. Our study of com- 

 parative anatomy ; of the history that is recorded in the rocks ; 

 of the facts of adaptation to environment ; of variation and 

 heredity, all convince us of the mutability of species and the 

 truth of the great doctrine of evolution. But as to the how and 

 why of evolution there is very little certainty. As Driesch says : 

 'In this field we are just at the very beginning of what deserves 

 the name of exact knowledge."* 



Modern thought on Evolution may be said to have started 

 with Buffon (1707 — 1788), whose merit is that he "inspired 

 later writers to consider the great problem. "t He first pointed 

 out on a broad scale the mutability of species in relation to 

 changes of environment ; and he laid stress on modifications 



*The Science and Pliilosophy of the Organism, p. 21. 

 tOsborri : From the Greeks to Darwin, p. 137. 



