have been as familiar to the ancient philosophers as to the modern ones,
and to have given rise to the beautiful hieroglyphic figure of the proton
oon, or first great egg, produced by night, that is, whose origin is
involved in obscurity, and animated by 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."
(See Alpheus S. Packard, "Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution, His Life and
Work, with Translations of his writings on Organic Evolution". London,
1901.)

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 Geoffroy 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