4S6 
BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
in definite lines by generation through grades of organization eventua- 
ting in the production of the highest plants and animals. 
This work, after some years, was found to be the production of 
31 r. Robert Chambers, of the great publishing house of J. W. a: R. 
Chambers, of Edinburgh. It was really the first publication in 
Europe in any orderly and popular way, of the theory of progressive 
development. Its tone was mild and serious. It went further, I 
think, than modern science will justify in respect of some statements 
which it made regarding the coming into existence of new creations of 
life, but it made no attempt to show how or why the various animals 
and plants have distinct characters, and how there came to be in the 
world all the existing variations. “ Vestiges of Creation was the 
first attempt to put into systematic shape, from the naturalist’s point 
of view, the views of the evolutionists. In 1852 Herbert Spencer, 
who was not a naturalist so much as he was a logician, published his 
Creation and Development ” essays, in which, with all his logical 
force and consistency, he discussed the idea of development as against 
a special creation. Eight years later came Darwin’s Origin of Species, 
an almost marvelous work, in which the whole subject w^as presented 
with a fulness and thoroughness which forced the question upon the 
honest consideration of thoughtful men ; and thus the subject was 
before the world in all its strength I Of course it met with great 
opposition. It was believed to be a doctrine fatal to the received 
religious faith of Christendom, and even scientific men, liberal and 
broad-minded as Sir John Herschel, condemned it as heresy, while a 
no less eminent geologist, 3Ir. Lyell, declared in the earlier editions of 
his great work, that the known facts of geology were fatal to the theory 
of progressive development. Sir Charles must have receded from this 
position eventually, and, indeed, it is surprising that he ever held it ; 
for his own view, which he so successfully established, that all the 
changes which had taken place in the earth’s crust could be accounted 
for by conditions which now exist, and which are in operation in this 
age, was a declaration of a belief in a general and universal law govern- 
ing the operations of nature ; or, in other words, if natural causation 
is competent to account for the not living part of our globe, why 
should it not account for the living part ? Although the literary and 
scientific w^orld, as w’ell as the religious world, regarded with disfavor 
■the arguments and reasoning in support of the theory set forth by 
