- 
THE 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
JANUARY, 1880. 
I. THE HISTORY OF EVOLUTIONISM* 
STS' VOLUTIONISM, in the broad plain sense of the term, 
(iL|L as opposed to the doCtrine of mechanical-individual 
creation, may now be hailed as victorious along the 
whole line. In proof, we need only listen to the voices 
which are raising the well-known chorus : — “ All this we 
knew long ago ! Was there any need of a Darwin or a 
Wallace to tell us truths which are to be found embodied in 
classical myths, hinted at by early Christian fathers, and 
even shadowed forth in Holy Writ ?” We might, indeed, 
ask the utterers of such voices how it comes that none of 
them was able to deteCt the great truth in these old sagas 
and writings till modern biologists found it in the Book of 
Nature ? But it is not always good policy to tear away the 
veil under which neophytes hide the faCt of their con- 
version. 
Turning, then, from the initial controversy, we have to 
organise the territory which we have won. Accepting 
Evolution as God’s way of Creation, we have before us the 
almost infinite task of tracing out how or by what agencies 
it is effected ? why the organic world is as we find it, and 
not other ? In connection with this undertaking we shall 
find it highly important to explore all the earlier suggestions 
and hypotheses which have been put forward as to Descent, 
its efficient causes, and its laws of operation. Not long ago 
we had the pleasure of reviewing a thoughtful and sug- 
gestive work,t in which the author seeks to prove that 
* Erasmus Darwin. By Ernst Krause. With a Preliminary Notice by 
Charles Darwin. London : John Murray. 
f Evolution, Old and New. By S. Butler. 
VOL- II. (THIRD SERIES). B 
