WHAT WE OWE TO DARWIN 19 



been its origin, the idea was familiar to several 

 of the ancient Greek philosophers, as it was to 

 Hume and Kant ; it fired the imagination of 

 Lucretius and linked him to Goethe ; it persisted 

 through the ages of other than scientific pre- 

 occupation ; it became a concrete theory of the 

 transformation of species in the hands of the 

 pioneers of modern biology — such as Buffon, 

 Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin, and Treviranus ; and 

 it became current intellectual coin when Charles 

 Darwin, Alfred Eussel Wallace, Herbert Spencer, 

 Huxley, and Haeckel, with united but varied 

 achievements, won the conviction of most thought- 

 ful men. 



The Evolution Theory a Modal Interpre- 

 tation. — It must be carefully noted that the 

 general idea of organic evolution is a modal inter- 

 pretation of the history of the animate world. It 

 suggests the mode by which organisms have come 

 to be as they are. It says that the mode is scien- 

 tifically decipherable, and is comparable to what 

 we see going on in the origin of new breeds of 

 pigeons or new varieties of wheat. But what 

 other view is there ? We do not know of any 

 other scientific view, and the only alternative is 

 to maintain that the mode of origin of the various 

 kinds of living creatures is undecipherable scien- 

 tifically, and caimot be formulated except in 

 transcendental terms, such as Creation. The 

 general view when Darwin published the " Origin 

 of Species " was Creationist, or, if the naturahst 

 fought shy of such words, the Linnsean dogma 

 of the Fixity of Species was accepted and the 

 question of origin was regarded as hopeless. 



Much will be gained if we clearly understand 



