VIS IV S OF ERASMUS DARWIN 217 



nomia, though he is careful, moro suo, never to 

 mention this work by name. Paley's success was 

 probably one of the chief causes of the neglect 

 into which the Buffonian and Darwinian systems fell 

 in this country." Dr. Darwin died in the same year 

 (1802) as that in which the Natural Theology was 

 published. 



Krause also writes of the reception given by his 

 contemporaries to his " physio-philosophical ideas." 

 " They spoke of his wild and eccentric fancies, and 

 the expression ' Darwinising ' (as employed, for ex- 

 ample, by the poet Coleridge when writing on Still- 

 ingfleet) was accepted in England nearly as the an- 

 tithesis of sober biological investigation." * 



The grandson of Erasmus Darwin had little appre- 

 ciation of the views of him of whom, through atavic 

 heredity, he was the intellectual and scientific child. 

 " It is curious," he says in the ' Historical Sketch ' 

 of the Origin of Species—" it is curious how largely 

 my grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, anticipated the 

 views and erroneous grounds of opinion of Lamarck 

 in his Zoonomia (vol. i., pp. 500-510), published in 

 1794." It seems a little strange that Charles Darwin 

 did not devote a few lines to stating just what his 

 ancestor's views were, for certain of them, as we shall 

 see, are anticipations of his own. 



The views of Erasmus Darwin may thus be sum- 

 marily stated : 



I. All animals have originated "from a single liv- 

 ing filament " (p. 230), or, stated in other words, re- 



* Krause, The Scientific Works of Erasmus Darwin, footnote on 

 p. 134 : " See ' Athenaeum,' March, 1875, p. 423." 



