rmediate 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[6] 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.[7]

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[8] gives us a glimpse, to Lorenz Oken (1779-1851) 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 Evoluti