6 ANTICIPA TIOiV AND INTERPRETA TION OF NA TURE. 



-" proof or demonstration. Darwin came in for the 

 \ proof, profiting richly by the hard struggles of his 

 predece ss ors over the firs t two stages. Lamarck 

 \ has lately risen in popular knowledge as having 

 propounded Evolution, but among his contempora- 

 ries and predecessors in France, Germany, and 

 England, we find Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, Goethe, 

 Treviranus, and searching for their inspiration, we 

 ire led back to the natural philosophers, begin- 

 ning with Bacon, and ending with Herder. Among 

 these men we find the second birth or renaissance 

 of the idea, and among_t he Greeks its first birth . 



Evolution, as a natural explanation of the origin 

 of the higher forms of life, succeeded the old 

 mythology and autochthony in Greece, and devel- 

 oped from the teachings of Thales and Anaximan- 

 der into those of Aristotle. This great philosopher 

 had a general conception of the origin of higher 

 species by descent from lower, yet he could not 

 know of any actual Evolution series, such as we 

 have derived from Paleontology. He also consid- 

 ered certain of the factors of Evolution underlying 

 the general law, and it is startling to find him, over 

 two thousand years ago, clearly stating, and then 

 rejecting, the theory of the Survival of the Fittest 

 as an explanation of the evolution of adaptive 

 structures. 



The Greek natural history literature, from begin- 

 ning to end, is a continuous source of pleasure 

 and surprise. Amid wide differences of opinion as 



