obscurity, and
animated by [Greek: Eros], that is, by Divine Love; from whence
proceeded all things which exist."

Lamarck (1744-1829) seems to have become an evolutionist
independently of Erasmus Darwin's influence, though the parallelism
between them is striking. He probably owed something to Buffon, but he
developed his theory along a different line. Whatever view be held in
regard to that theory there is no doubt that Lamarck was a
thorough-going evolutionist. Professor Haeckel speaks of the
_Philosophie Zoologique_ as "the first connected and 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 pl