8 Evolution 



deal of modification, as we shall see ; but his name is for 

 ever associated with the first great demonstration of the 

 truth of evolution. Geologists were advancing a little in 

 the rear of the astronomers. In 1829 Sir Charles Lyell 

 published his Principles of Geology, which gave a new 

 extension to the idea of evolution. Laplace had shown 

 that our earth was originally a huge fragment (or 

 "ring," but modern astronomy does not hold to this) of 

 attenuated matter thrown off by the condensing nebula. 

 Lyell carried the story a step further, and showed that 

 the agencies which we see at work on the face of the 

 earth to-day have slowly put together the belt of solid 

 rock that confines its molten bowels. 



The way was being rapidly cleared for Charles Darwin 

 and Herbert Spencer. The application of evolution to 

 living things was made difficult, not only by the general 

 prejudice arising from traditional views, but by the fact 

 that the great naturalists Linnaeus and Cuvier had 

 declared the various species of animals and plants to be 

 unchangeable. When, therefore, Jean Lamarck began 

 in 1802 to press the idea of biological development, he 

 had an insuperable prejudice to fight. His most famous 

 work, the Zoological Philosophy (1809), elaborated a 

 complete system of evolution through the now familiar 

 forces of heredity and adaptation. His speculations in 

 detail were naturally crude and premature, but his general 

 work was so well thought out that even one of the 

 modern schools of evolutionists goes by the name of the 

 Neo-Lamarckians. In his day the opposition was too 

 strong for him, and he died in obscurity. But the principle 

 had now an indomitable vitality, and was breaking out 

 on all sides. Goethe in Germany consecrated and applied 

 it in his immortal works ; it was making its appearance 

 constantly in England before the middle of the nineteenth 

 century, 1 found in an obscure English journal of the 



