While it is true, as Prof. H.F. Osborn puts it, that "'Before and after
Darwin' will always be the ante et post urbem conditam of biological
history," it is also true that the general idea of organic evolution
is very ancient. In his admirable sketch "From the Greeks to Darwin"
("Columbia University Biological Series", Vol. I. New York and London,
1894. We must acknowledge our great indebtness to this fine piece of
work.), Prof. Osborn has shown that several of the ancient philosophers
looked upon Nature as a gradual development and as still in process of
change. In the suggestions of Empedocles, to take the best instance,
there were "four sparks of truth,--first, that the development of life
was a gradual process; second, that plants were evolved before animals;
third, that imperfect forms were gradually replaced (not succeeded)
by perfect forms; fourth, that the natural cause of the production of
perfect forms was the extinction of the imperfect." (Op. cit. page
41.) But the fundamental idea of one stage giving origin to another was
absent. As the blue Aegean teemed with treasures of beauty and threw
many upon its shores, so did Nature produce like a fertile artist what
had to be rejected as well as what was able to survive, but the idea of
one species emerging out of another was not yet conceived.
Aristotle's views of Nature (See G.J. Romanes, "Aristotle as a
Naturalist", "Contemporary Review", Vol. LIX. page 275, 1891; G. Pouchet
"La Biologie Aristotelique", Paris, 1885; E. Zeller, "A History of
Greek Philosophy", London, 1881, and "Ueber die griechischen Vorganger
Darwin's", "Abhandl. Berlin Akad." 1878, pages 111-124.) seem to have
been more definitely evolutionist than those of his predecessors, in
this sense, at least, that he recognised not only an ascending scale,
but a genetic series from polyp to man and an age-long movement towards
perfection. "It is due to the resistance of matter to form that Nature
can only rise by degrees from lower to higher types." "Nature produces
those things which, being continually moved by a certain principle
contained in themselves, arrive at a certain end."
To discern the outcrop of evolution-doctrine in the long interval
between Aristotle and Bacon seems to be very difficult, and some of
the instances that have been cited strike one as forced. Epicurus and
Lucretius, often called poets of evolution, both pictured animals as
arising directly out of the earth, very much as Milton's lion long
afterwards pawed its way out. Even when we come to Bruno who wrote that
"to the sound of the harp of the Universal Apollo (the World Spirit),
the lower organisms are called by stages to higher, and the lower stages
are connected by intermediate forms with the higher," there is great
room, as Prof. Osborn points out (op. cit. page 81.), for difference of
opinion as to how far he was an evolutionist in our sense of the term.
The awakening of natural science in the sixteenth century brought the
possibility of a concrete evolution theory nearer, and in the early
seventeenth century we find evidences of a new spirit--in the embryology
of Harvey and the classifications of Ray. Besides sober naturalists
there were speculative dreamers in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries who had at least got beyond static formulae, but, as Professor
Osborn points out (op. cit. page 87.), "it is a very striking fact, that
the basis of our modern methods of studying the Evolution problem was
established not by the early naturalists nor by the speculative writers,
but by the Philosophers." He refers to Bacon, Descartes, Leibnitz, Hume,
Kant, Lessing, Herder, and Schelling. "They alone were upon the main
track of modern thought. It is evident that they were groping in the
dark for a working theory of the Evolution of life, and it is remarkable
that they clearly perceived from the outset that the point to which
observation should be directed was not the past but the present
mutability of species, and further, that this mutability was simply the
variation of individuals on an extended scale."
Bacon seems to have been one of the first to think definitely about the
mutability of species, and he was far ahead of his age in his suggestion
of what we now call a Station of Experimental Evolution. Leibnitz
discusses in so many words how the species of animals may be changed
and how intermediate species may once have linked those that now seem
discontinuous. "All natural orders of beings present but a single
chain"... "All advances by degrees in Nature, and nothing by leaps."
Similar evolutionist statements are to be found in the works of the
other "philosophers," to whom Prof. Osborn refers, who were, indeed,
more scientific than the naturalists of their day. It must be borne in
mind that the general idea of organic evolution--that the present is
the child of the past--is in great part just the idea of human history
projected upon the natural world, differentiated by the qualification
that the continuous "Becoming" has been wrought out by forces inherent
in the organisms themselves and in their environment.
A reference to Kant (See Brock, "Die Stellung Kant's zur
Deszendenztheorie," "Biol. Centralbl." VIII. 1889, pages 641-648. Fritz
Schultze, "Kant und Darwin", Jena, 1875.) should come in historical
order after Buffon, with whose writings he was acquainted, but he seems,
along with Herder and Schelling, to be best regarded as the culmination
of the evolutionist philosophers--of those at least who interested
themselves in scientific problems. In a famous passage he speaks of
"the agreement of so many kinds of animals in a certain common plan of
structure"... an "analogy of forms" which "strengthens the supposition
that they have an actual blood-relationship, due to derivation from a
common parent." He speaks of "the great Family of creatures, for as
a Family we must conceive it, if the above-mentioned continuous and
connected relationship has a real foundation." Prof. Osborn alludes to
the scientific caution which led Kant, biology being what it was, to
refuse to entertain the hope "that a Newton may one day arise even to
make the production of a blade of grass comprehensible, according
to natural laws ordained by no intention." As Prof. Haeckel finely
observes, Darwin rose up as Kant's Newton. (Mr Alfred Russel Wallace
writes: "We claim for Darwin that he is the Newton of natural history,
and that, just so surely as that the discovery and demonstration by
Newton of the law of gravitation established order in place of chaos and
laid a sure foundation for all future study of the starry heavens, so
surely has Darwin, by his discovery of the law of natural selection and
his demonstration of the great principle of the preservation of useful
variations in the struggle for life, not only thrown a flood of light
on the process of development of the whole organic world, but
also established a firm foundation for all future study of nature."
("Darwinism", London, 1889, page 9). See also Prof. Karl Pearson's
"Grammar of Science" (2nd edition), London, 1900, page 32. See Osborn,
op. cit. Page 100.))
The scientific renaissance brought a wealth of fresh impressions and
some freedom from the tyranny of tradition, and the twofold stimulus
stirred the speculative activity of a great variety of men from old
Claude Duret of Moulins, of whose weird transformism (1609) Dr Henry
de Varigny ("Experimental Evolution". London, 1892. Chap. 1. page 14.)
gives us a glimpse, to Lorenz Oken (1799-1851) whose writings are such
mixtures of sense and nonsense that some regard him as a
far-seeing prophet and others as a fatuous follower of intellectual
will-o'-the-wisps. Similarly, for De Maillet, Maupertuis, Diderot,
Bonnet, and others, we must agree with Professor Osborn that they were
not actually in the main Evolution movement. Some have been included in
the roll of honour on very slender evidence, Robinet for instance, whose
evolutionism seems to us extremely dubious. (See J. Arthur Thomson,
"The Science of Life". London, 1899. Chap. XVI. "Evolution of Evolution
Theory".)
The first naturalist to give a broad and concrete expression to the
evolutionist doctrine of descent was Buffon (1707-1788), but it
is interesting to recall the fact that his contemporary Linnaeus
(1707-1778), protagonist of the counter-doctrine of the fixity
of species (See Carus Sterne (Ernest Krause), "Die allgemeine
Weltanschauung in ihrer historischen Entwickelung". Stuttgart, 1889.
Chapter entitled "Bestandigkeit oder Veranderlichkeit der Naturwesen".),
went the length of admitting (in 1762) that new species might arise
by intercrossing. Buffon's position among the pioneers of the
evolution-doctrine is weakened by his habit of vacillating between his
own conclusions and the orthodoxy of the Sorbonne, but there is no doubt
that he had a firm grasp of the general idea of "l'enchainement des
etres."
Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), probably influenced by Buffon, was another
firm evolutionist, and the outline of his argument in the "Zoonomia"
("Zoonomia, or the Laws of Organic Life", 2 vols. London, 1794; Osborn
op. cit. page 145.) might serve in part at least to-day. "When we
revolve in our minds the metamorphoses of animals, as from the tadpole
to the frog; secondly, the changes produced by artificial cultivation,
as in the breeds of horses, dogs, and sheep; thirdly, the changes
produced by conditions of climate and of season, as in the sheep of
warm climates being covered with hair instead of wool, and the hares and
partridges of northern climates becoming white in winter: when,
further, we observe the changes of structure produced by habit, as seen
especially in men of different occupations; or the changes produced by
artificial mutilation and prenatal influences, as in the crossing
of species and production of monsters; fourth, when we observe the
essential unity of plan in all warm-blooded animals,--we are led to
conclude that they have been alike produced from a similar living
filament"... "From thus meditating upon the minute portion of time in
which many of the above changes have been produced, would it be too bold
to imagine, in the great length of time since the earth began to exist,
perhaps millions of years before the commencement of the history of
mankind, that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living
filament?"... "This idea of the gradual generation of all things seems to
have been as familiar to the ancient philosophers as to the modern
ones, and to have given rise to the beautiful hieroglyphic figure of the
proton oon, or first great egg, produced by night, that is, whose origin
is involved in obscurity, and animated by Eros, that is, by Divine Love;
from whence proceeded all things which exist."
Lamarck (1744-1829) seems to have become an evolutionist independently
of Erasmus Darwin's influence, though the parallelism between them is
striking. He probably owed something to Buffon, but he developed his
theory along a different line. Whatever view be held in regard to that
theory there is no doubt that Lamarck was a thorough-going evolutionist.
Professor Haeckel speaks of the "Philosophie Zoologique" as "the first
connected and thoroughly logical exposition of the theory of descent."
(See Alpheus S. Packard, "Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution, His Life
and Work, with Translations of his writings on Organic Evolution".
London, 1901.)
Besides the three old masters, as we may call them, Buffon, Erasmus
Darwin, and Lamarck, there were other quite convinced pre-Darwinian
evolutionists. The historian of the theory of descent must take account
of Treviranus whose "Biology or Philosophy of Animate Nature" is full of
evolutionary suggestions; of Etienne Geoffroy St Hilaire, who in
1830, before the French Academy of Sciences, fought with Cuvier, the
fellow-worker of his youth, an intellectual duel on the question of
descent; of Goethe, one of the founders of morphology and the greatest
poet of Evolution--who, in his eighty-first year, heard the tidings
of Geoffroy St Hilaire's defeat with an interest which transcended the
political anxieties of the time; and of many others who had gained with
more or less confidence and clearness a new outlook on Nature. It
will be remembered that Darwin refers to thirty-four more or less
evolutionist authors in his Historical Sketch, and the list might be
added to. Especially when we come near to 1858 do the numbers increase,
and one of the most remarkable, as also most independent champions of
the evolution-idea before that date was Herbert Spencer, who not only
marshalled the arguments in a very forcible way in 1852, but applied the
formula in detail in his "Principles of Psychology" in 1855. (See Edward
Clodd, "Pioneers of Evolution", London, page 161, 1897.)
It is right and proper that we should shake ourselves free from all
creationist appreciations of Darwin, and that we should recognise the
services of pre-Darwinian evolutionists who helped to make the time
ripe, yet one cannot help feeling that the citation of them is apt to
suggest two fallacies. It may suggest that Darwin simply entered into
the labours of his predecessors, whereas, as a matter of fact, he knew
very little about them till after he had been for years at work. To
write, as Samuel Butler did, "Buffon planted, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck
watered, but it was Mr Darwin who said 'That fruit is ripe,' and shook
it into his lap"... seems to us a quite misleading version of the facts
of the case. The second fallacy which the historical citation is
a little apt to suggest is that the filiation of ideas is a simple
problem. On the contrary, the history of an idea, like the pedigree
of an organism, is often very intricate, and the evolution of the
evolution-idea is bound up with the whole progress of the world. Thus
in order to interpret Darwin's clear formulation of the idea of organic
evolution and his convincing presentation of it, we have to do more than
go back to his immediate predecessors, such as Buffon, Erasmus Darwin,
and Lamarck; we have to inquire into the acceptance of evolutionary
conceptions in regard to other orders of facts, such as the earth and
the solar system (See Chapter IX. "The Genetic View of Nature" in J.T.
Merz's "History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century", Vol. 2,
Edinburgh and London, 1903.); we have to realise how the growing success
of scientific interpretation along other lines gave confidence to those
who refused to admit that there was any domain from which science could
be excluded as a trespasser; we have to take account of the development
of philosophical thought, and even of theological and religious
movements; we should also, if we are wise enough, consider social
changes. In short, we must abandon the idea that we can understand
the history of any science as such, without reference to contemporary
evolution in other departments of activity.
While there were many evolutionists before Darwin, few of them were
expert naturalists and few were known outside a small circle; what
was of much more importance was that the genetic view of nature was
insinuating itself in regard to other than biological orders of facts,
here a little and there a little, and that the scientific spirit had
ripened since the days when Cuvier laughed Lamarck out of court. How was
it that Darwin succeeded where others had failed? Because, in the first
place, he had clear visions--"pensees de la jeunesse, executees par
l'age mur"--which a University curriculum had not made impossible, which
the "Beagle" voyage made vivid, which an unrivalled British doggedness
made real--visions of the web of life, of the fountain of change within
the organism, of the struggle for existence and its winnowing, and of
the spreading genealogical tree. Because, in the second place, he put
so much grit into the verification of his visions, putting them to the
proof in an argument which is of its kind--direct demonstration being
out of the question--quite unequalled. Because, in the third place,
he broke down the opposition which the most scientific had felt to
the seductive modal formula of evolution by bringing forward a more
plausible theory of the process than had been previously suggested.
Nor can one forget, since questions of this magnitude are human and not
merely academic, that he wrote so that all men could understand.