THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 537 



THE AEGUMENT FOE OEGANIC EVOLUTION" BEFOEE 

 "THE OEIGIN OF SPECIES" 



By Pkofessob ARTHUR O. LOVEJOY 



THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOUBI 

 II 



IN" the former part of this historical inquiry, it was shown that four 

 of the arguments which rapidly made converts to the theory of 

 evolution after 1859 rested upon principles of scientific method and 

 facts of anatomy and physiology which were entirely familiar much 

 more than fifteen years before that date. A similar examination must 

 now be made of four more of the most important " evidences of evolu- 

 tion." Here again it will appear that the facts were known at least 

 as early as 1844, and that their evolutionary implications were pointed 

 out by Eobert Chambers, Herbert Spencer or other pre-Darwinian 

 writers. It will also appear that the flaws and gaps in the evidence 

 which could be plausibly exhibited by the opponents of the theory dur- 

 ing those fifteen years were, for the most part, not removed by the 

 " Origin of Species," nor for a number of years subsequent to its pub- 

 lication. Substantially, whatever force the arguments for the trans- 

 formist conception of the origin of the specific characters of organisms 

 had after 1859, they had before; and whatever weaknesses they had be- 

 fore that memorable year, they still had after it. In presenting proof of 

 this I shall, as before, indicate by direct citations the manner in which 

 the arguments were used by the early Darwinians, and then point out 

 the parallel reasonings in the evolutionists of the earlier period. 



3. The Argument from the Sequence of Types in Paleontology. — 

 The nature of this argument is, of course, too familiar to need exposi- 

 tion. The value which Huxley attached to it in 1863 is shown by a 

 passage in his " Lectures on the Phenomena of Organic Nature " : 



If you regard the whole series of stratified rocks . . . constituting the only- 

 record we have of a most prodigious lapse of time; — if you observe in these 

 successive strata of rocks successive groups of animals arising and dying out, 

 a constant succession giving you the same kind of impression, as you travel 

 from one group of strata to another as you would have in travelling from one 

 country to another; . . . when you look at this wonderful history and ask 

 what it means, it is only a paltering with words if you are offered the reply, 

 *' They were so created." But if, on the other hand, you look on all forms of 

 organized beings as the results of the gradual modification of a primitive type, 

 the facts receive a meaning and you see that these older conditions are the 

 necessary predecessors of the present. Viewed in this light the facts of pale- 



voii. lxxv. — 36. 



