animate Nature."

Goethe (1749-1832) (See Haeckel, "Die Naturanschauung von Darwin, Goethe
und Lamarck", Jena, 1882.), who knew Buffon's work but not Lamarck's, is
peculiarly interesting as one of the first to use the evolution-idea as a
guiding hypothesis, e.g. in the interpretation of vestigial structures in
man, and to realise that organisms express an attempt to make a compromise
between specific inertia and individual change. He gave the finest
expression that science has yet known--if it has known it--of the kernel-
idea of what is called "bathmism," the idea of an "inherent growth-force"--
and at the same time he held that "the way of life powerfully reacts upon
all form" and that the orderly growth of form "yields to change from
externally acting causes."

Besides Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, Treviranus, and Goethe, there were
other "pioneers of evolution," whose views have been often discussed and
appraised. Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844), whose work Goethe
so much admired, was on the whole Buffonian, emphasising the direct action
of the changeful milieu. "Species vary with their environment, and
existing species have descended by modification from earlier and somewhat
simpler species." He had a glimpse of the selection idea, and believed in
mutations or sudden leaps--induced in the embryonic condition by external
influences. The complete history of evolution-theories will include many
instances of guesses at truth which were afterwards substantiated, thus the
geographer von Buch (1773-1853) detected the importance of the Isolation
factor on which Wagner, Romanes, Gulick and others have laid great stress,
but we must content ourselves with recalling one other pioneer, the author
of the "Vestiges of Creation" (1844), a work which passed through ten
editions in nine years and certainly helped to harrow the soil for Darwin's
sowing. As Darwin said, "it did excellent service in this country in