Organic Evolution , Danvinism and the Genesis of Species . 11 
little or nothing was knl*\vn of the actual history of past 
life on the globe and to him species were what they had 
always been. “ Totidem numeramus species quot in principio 
formae sunt ereatae," (we reckon as many species as there 
were forms created in the beginning). And this belief in 
the immutability of what are called species persisted until 
the middle of the present century. And that too in spite 
of the efforts of such thinkers as Lamarck and Robert 
Chambers, the author of The Vestiges of Creation. Unless we 
can divest our minds of the metaphysical idea of species 
whenever we use the word in a biological sense, we shall 
utterly fail to perceive the bearing and validity of the argu¬ 
ments either for or against it. Species as we now use it, 
is simply a traditional word designating a category of clas¬ 
sification. It denotes no objective existence. In other 
words, as Lankester expresses it, species as well as genera, 
orders, and classes are but subjective expressions of a vast 
ramifying pedigree in which the only objective existences 
are individuals. 
The doctrine of evolution, or the transformation of the 
homogeneous into the heterogeneous by means of successive 
differentiations is not new. It is not even modern. You 
may find it. imperfectly conceived, it is true, in the spec¬ 
ulations of the Hindus and Greeks over two thousand years 
ago. Anaximander of Miletus, 611 b. c., was a thorough¬ 
going evolutionist for his day. He taught that the earth 
had originally been evolved from a fluid state. Living 
beings arose by gradual development out of the elementary 
moisture under the influence of heat. Land animals were 
originally fishes which had acquired their present form 
through the drying up of the surface of the earth. As all 
things were developed from the original matter so they 
finally declined into that whence they had their origin. 
Still more remarkable as anticipating the survival of the 
fittest was the cosmogony of Empedocles, who was born 
about 5Q0 b c. His theory of the origin of animals is 
absurd enough to our eyes. Plants were first formed by 
