Evolution in Modern Thought | Page 4

thoroughly logical
exposition of the theory of descent."[12]
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
Geoffrey 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.[13]

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;[14] 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--"pensées de la jeunesse, executées par l'âge
mûr"--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