RISE OF EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 411 
commentaries upon creation, which accord very closely with 
the modern theistic conception of evolution. If the ortho- 
doxy of Augustine had remained the teaching of the Church, 
the final establishment of evolution would have come far 
earlier than it did, certainly during the eighteenth century 
instead of the nineteenth century, and the bitter controversy 
over this truth of nature would never have arisen.” 
The conception of special creation brought into especial 
prominence upon the Continent by Suarez was taken up by 
John Milton in his great epic Paradise Lost, in which he 
gave a picture of creation that molded into specific form 
the opinion of the English-speaking clergy and of the 
masses who read his book. When the doctrine of organic 
evolution was announced, it came into conflict with this 
particular idea; and, as Huxley has very pointedly remarked, 
the new theory of organic evolution found itself in conflict 
with the Miltonic, rather than the Mosaic cosmology. All this 
represents an interesting phase in intellectual development. 
Forerunners of Lamarck.—We now take up the imme- 
diate predecessors of Lamarck. Those to be mentioned are 
Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Goethe. 
Buffon (1707-1788) (Fig. 116), although of a more philo- 
sophical mind than many of his contemporaries, was not a 
true investigator. That is, he left no technical papers or 
contributions to science. From 1739 to the time of his death 
he was the superintendent of the Jardin du Roi. He was a 
man of elegance, with an assured position in society. He 
was a delightful writer, a circumstance that enabled him to 
make natural history popular. It is said that the advance 
sheets of Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle were to be found on the 
tables of the boudoirs of ladies of fashion. In that work he 
suggested the idea that the different forms of life were grad- 
ually produced, but his timidity and his prudence led him 
to be obscure in what he said. 
