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PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



ery of the circulation of the blood. A more illustrious 

 name than his is that of Rene Descartes, a man who 

 combined theory with observation; " one who," in 

 Huxley's words, " saw that the discoveries of Galileo 

 meant that the remotest parts of the universe were 

 governed by mechanical laws, while those of Harvey 

 meant that the same laws presided over the opera- 

 tions of that portion of the world which is nearest to 

 us, namely, our own bodily frame." The greatness 

 of this man, a good Catholic, whom the Jesuits 

 charged with Atheism, has no mean tribute in his 

 influence on an equally remarkable man, Benedict 

 Spinoza. Spinoza reduced the Cartesian analysis of 

 phenomena into God, mind and matter to one phe- 

 nomenon, namely, God, of whom matter and spirit, 

 extension and thought, are but attributes. His short 

 life fell within the longer span of Newton's, whose 

 strange subjection to the theological influences of 

 his age is seen in this immortal interpreter of the 

 laws of the universe^ wasting his later years on an 

 attempt to interpret unfulfilled prophecy. These and 

 others, as Locke, Leibnitz, Herder, and Schelling, 

 like the great Hebrew leader, had glimpses of a 

 goodly land which they were not themselves to 

 enter. But, perhaps, in the roll of illustrious men 

 to whom prevision came, none have better claim to 

 everlasting remembrance than Immanuel Kant. For 

 in his Theory of the Heavens, published in 1755, he 

 anticipates that hypothesis of the origin of the pres- 

 ent universe which, associated with the succeeding 



