First Studies of Nature

EVOLUTION, as we now know it, is a product of the latter half of the present century. It would, however, be a mistake to imagine that Minerva-like it came forth from the brain of Darwin or Spencer, or that of anyone else, as the fully-developed theory which has caused so great a stir in the intellectual world. No; Evolution, as a theory, is not the work of one man, nor the result of the work of any body of men that could be designated by name. Neither is it the product of any one generation or epoch. On the contrary, it has been the joint achievement, if such it can be called, of countless thinkers and observers and experimenters of many climes and of many centuries. It is the focus towards which many and divers lines of thought have converged from the earliest periods of speculation and scientific research down to our own. The sages of India and Babylonia; the priests of Egypt and Assyria; the philosophers of Greece and Rome; the Fathers of the early Church and the Schoolmen of the Middle Ages, as well as the scholars and discoverers of subsequent ages, contributed toward the establishment of the theory on the basis on which it now reposes.

This being the case, it will help us to a more intelligent appreciation of the theory to take a brief retrospect of the work accomplished by the earlier workers in the field, and to review some of the more important observations and discoveries which led up to the promulgation of Evolution as a theory of the universal application which is now claimed for it.