THE DARWINIAN THEORY 



LECTURE I 



HISTORY OF THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION 



Very early in human history the necessity arose for 

 collective names to indicate the various groups and 

 kinds of animals ; to distinguish those that were 

 useful for food, clothing, or weapons, &c, from 

 those which were useless or dangerous. An early 

 mode of classification was according to habitat ; thus 

 Solomon divided animals into beasts, fowls, creeping 

 things, and fishes. This classification was hardly 

 improved upon till the time of Aristotle, 384- 

 322 (?) B.C., a man for whose intellectual power the 

 word stupendous seems barely adequate. Aristotle 

 made many shrewd and acute observations which 

 were not understood at the time, and were redis- 

 covered 2000 years later : he was a man far ahead 

 of his age. 



After this follows a great gap in the history- 

 Facts were steadily accumulating, but there was no 

 system or governing principle. Nothing was known 

 of the history of life on earth, and there was indeed 



A 



