CHAPTER XIX

The Rise of Evolutionary Thought, 407

Opinion before Lamarck, 407. Views of certain Fathers of the Church, 408. St. Augustine, 409. St. Thomas Aquinas, 409. The rise of the doctrine of special creation, 410. Suarez, 410. Effect of John Milton's writings, 411. Forerunners of Lamarck: Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, Goethe, 411. Statement of Buffon's views on evolution, 412. Erasmus Darwin the greatest of Lamarck's predecessors, 413. His writings, 414. Paley's Natural Theology directed against them, 414. Goethe's connection with evolutionary thought, 414. Causes for the neglect of Lamarck's theoretical writings, 415. The temporary disappearance of the doctrine of organic evolution, 415. Cuvier's opposition, 415. The debate between Cuvier and St. Hilaire, 415. Its effect, 417. Influence of Lyell's Principles of Geology, 418. Herbert Spencer's analysis in 1852, 419. Darwin and Wallace, 420. Circumstances under which their work was laid before the Linnæan Society of London, 420. The letter of transmission signed by Lyell and Hooker, 420-422. The personality of Darwin, 422. Appearance, 423. His charm of manner, 423. Affectionate consideration at home, 424. Unexampled industry and conscientiousness in the face of ill health, 424, 426. His early life and education, 425. Voyage of the _Beagle_, 425. The results of his five years' voyage, 426. Life at Downs, 426. Parallelism in the thought of Darwin and Wallace, 427. Darwin's account of how he arrived at the conception of natural selection, 427. Wallace's narrative, 428. The Darwin-Wallace theory launched in 1858, 429. Darwin's book on The Origin of Species regarded by him as merely an outline, 429. The spread of the doctrine of organic evolution, 429. Huxley one of its great popular exponents, 430. Haeckel, 431. After Darwin, the problem was to explain phenomena, 433.