apologized at once had anybody pointed out to him what a solecism he was
committing.

The metaphysical side of Evolution was thus no novelty when Darwin
arrived. Had Oken never lived, there would still have been millions of
persons trained from their childhood to believe that we are continually
urged upwards by a force called the Will of God. In 1819 Schopenhauer
published his treatise on The World as Will, which is the metaphysical
complement to Lamarck's natural history, as it demonstrates that the
driving force behind Evolution is a will-to-live, and to live, as Christ
said long before, more abundantly. And the earlier philosophers, from
Plato to Leibniz, had kept the human mind open for the thought of
the universe as one idea behind all its physically apprehensible
transformations.


CORRECTED DATES FOR THE DISCOVERY OF EVOLUTION

All this, remember, is the state of things in the pre-Darwin period,
which so many of us still think of as a pre-evolutionary period.
Evolutionism was the rage before Queen Victoria came to the throne. To
fix this chronology, let me repeat the story told by Weismann of the
July revolution in Paris in 1830, when the French got rid of Charles the
Tenth. Goethe was then still living; and a French friend of his called
on him and found him wildly excited. 'What do you think of the great
event?' said Goethe. 'The volcano is in eruption; and all is in flames.
There can no longer be discussion with closed doors.' The Frenchman
replied that no doubt it was a terrible business; but what could they
expect with such a ministry and such a king? 'Stuff!' said Goethe: 'I
am not thinking of these people at all, but of the open rupture in