8 FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 
were Lamarck and Saint-Hilaire, and with them was 
he who has been called “the sanest of men’—Geethe. 
There had been, they thought, in reality 
no new era and no new creation—only a 
gradual change from old to new, from 
old life under old conditions to new life with new envi- 
ronment. The natural tendency toward progress in life, 
the influence of the creatures’ own desires and needs, 
the attempt of creatures to fit themselves to new sur- 
roundings were, they thought, in some way the causes 
of the changes in forms which Cuvier ascribed to new 
creations. 
But there were some facts not easy to explain on 
these suppositions, and the causes of change suggested 
by Lamarck seemed to most thinkers of his time entirely 
disproportionate to the changes themselves, Again, the 
weight of the great names of Linnzus and Cuvier rested 
oh the other side, and authority has its weight in science 
as elsewhere when we come to estimate the relative 
probability of different conclusions. Besides, not enough 
of fact was in anybody’s possession to take these dis- 
cussions out of the region of speculation. There is rea- 
son to believe that Cuvier himself doubted his own dic- 
tum as to the special creation, unchanging permanence, 
and ultimate extinction of species. But Cuvier saw no 
way to any better view, and he believed that the advance- 
ment of science would come through the gathering and 
sorting of facts rather than from any hypotheses, how- 
ever ingenious, as to the origin of present conditions. 
But the permanence and persistence of type which 
Cuvier had demonstrated came to be a necessary ele- 
ment in the answer to the still vexed 
question of the origin of species. And 
this fact of unity formed the corner- 
stone in the answer given by Agassiz. The species rep- 
The answer of 
Lamarck. 
The answer of 
Agassiz. 
