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 (See Brock, "Die Stellung Kant's zur
Deszendenztheorie," "Biol. Centralbl." VIII. 1889, pages 641-648. Fritz
Schultze, "Kant und Darwin", Jena, 1875.) 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. (Mr Alfred
Russel Wallace writes: "We claim for Darwin that he is the Newton of
natural history, and that, just so surely as that the discovery and