18 THE EVOLUTION THEORY 



sentences: 'The world has been evolved, not created; it has arisen 

 little by little from a small beginning, and has increased through the 

 activity of the elemental forces embodied in itself, and so has rather 

 grown than suddenly come into being at an almighty word.' ' What 

 a sublime idea of the infinite might of the great Architect ! the Cause 

 of all causes, the Father of all fathers, the Ens entium ! For if we 

 could compare the Infinite it would surely require a greater Infinite 

 to cause the causes of effects than to produce the effects them- 

 selves.' 



In these words he sets forth his position in regard to religion, 

 and does so in precisely the same terms as we may use to-day when 

 we say: 'All that happens in the world depends on the forces that 

 prevail in it, and results according to law ; but where these forces 

 and "their substratum, Matter, come from, we know not, and here we 

 have room for faith.' 



I have not been able to discover whether the Zoonomia, with its 

 revolutionary ideas, attracted much attention at the time when it 

 appeared, but it would seem not. In any case, it was afterwards so 

 absolutely forgotten, that in an otherwise very complete History of 

 Zoology, published in 187a by Victor Carus, it was not even 

 mentioned. About a year after the appearance of Zoonomia, Isidore 

 Geoffroy St.-Hilaire in Paris expounded the view that what are called 

 species are really only 'degenerations,' deteriorations from one and 

 the same type, which shows that he too had begun to have doubts as 

 to the fixity of species. Yet it was not till the third decade of- the 

 nineteenth century that he clearly and definitely took up the position 

 of the doctrine of transformation, and to this we shall have to return 

 later on. 



But as early as the first decade of the century this position was 

 taken up by two noteworthy naturalists, a German and a Frenchman, 

 Treviranus and Lamarck. 



Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus, born at Bremen in 1776, an 

 excellent observer and an ingenious investigator, published, in 180a, 

 a book entitled Biologic, oder Philosophie der lebenden Natur 

 {Biology, or Philosophy of Animate Nature], in which he expresses and 

 elaborates the idea of the Evolution theory with perfect clearness, 

 i We read there, for instance : ' In every living being there exists 

 a capacity for endless diversity of form ; each possesses the power of 

 adapting its organization to the variations of the external world, and 

 'it is this power, called into activity by cosmic changes, which has 

 enabled the simple zoophytes of the primitive world to climb to 

 higher and higher stages of organization, and has brought endless 



