at work on natural history who might have contributed much toward an answer to this question; this man was Buffon. His powers of research and thought were remarkable and his gift in presenting results of research and thought showed genius. He had caught the idea of an evolution in Nature and was likely to make a great advance with it; but he, too, was made to feel the power of theology.
While he gave pleasing descriptions of animals the Church petted him, but when he began to deduce truths of philosophical import the batteries of the Sorbonne were opened upon him; he was made to know that "the sacred deposit of truth committed to the Church" was, that "in the beginning God made the heavens and the earth"; and that "all things were made at the beginning of the world." For his simple statement of truths in natural science which are to-day truisms, he was dragged forth by the theological faculty, forced to recant publicly, and to print his recantation. In this he announced, "I abandon everything in my book respecting the formation of the earth, and generally all which may be contrary to the narrative of Moses."[1]
But all this triumph of the Chaldæo-Babylonian creation legends which the Church had inherited availed but little.
About the end of the eighteenth century fruitful suggestions and even clear presentations of this or that part of a large evolutionary doctrine came thick and fast, and from the most divergent quarters. Especially remarkable were those which came from Erasmus Darwin in England, from Maupertuis in France, from Oken in Switzerland, and, most brilliantly of all, from Goethe in Germany.
Two men among these thinkers must be especially mentioned—Treviranus in Germany and Lamarck in France; each independently of the other drew the world more completely than ever before in this direction.
From Treviranus came, in 1802, his work on biology, and in this he gave forth the idea that from forms of life originally simple had arisen all higher organizations by gradual development;
- ↑ For Descartes in his relation to the Copernican theory, see Saisset, Descartes et ses Précurseurs; also Fouillée, Descartes, Paris, 1893, chaps, ii and iii; also other authorities cited in my chapter on Astronomy; for his relation to the theory of evolution, see the Principes de Philosophie, 3ème partie, § 45. For De Maillet, see Quatrefages, Darwin et ses Précurseurs français, chap, i, citing D'Archiac, Paléontologie, Stratigraphie, vol. i; also, Perrier, La Philosophic zoologique avant Darwin, chap, vi; also the admirable article, Evolution, by Huxley, in Encyc. Britan. The title of De Maillet's book is, Telliamed, ou Entretiens d'un Philosophe indien avec un Missionnaire français sur la Diminution de la Mer, 1748 and 1756. For Buffon, see the authorities previously given, also the chapter on Geology in this work. For the resistance of both Catholic and Protestant authorities to the Linnæan system and ideas, see Alberg, Life of Linnæus, London, 1888, pp. 143-147, and 237.
