here is
a vast mass of vested interests opposed to the conclusion. Few know that
there are other great works upon descent with modification besides Mr.
Darwin's. Not one person in ten thousand has any distinct idea of what
Buffon, Dr. Darwin, and Lamarck propounded. Their names have been
discredited by the very authors who have been most indebted to them;
there is hardly a writer on evolution who does not think it incumbent
upon him to warn Lamarck off the ground which he at any rate made his
own, and to cast a stone at what he will call the "shallow speculations"
or "crude theories" or the "well-known doctrine" of the foremost
exponent of Buffon and Dr. Darwin. Buffon is a great name, Dr. Darwin is
no longer even this, and Lamarck has been so systematically laughed at
that it amounts to little less than philosophical suicide for anyone to
stand up in his behalf. Not one of our scientific elders or chief
priests but would caution a student rather to avoid the three great men
whom I have named than to consult them. It is a perilous task therefore
to try and take evolution from the pedestal on which it now appears to
stand so securely, and to put it back upon the one raised for it by its
propounders; yet this is what I believe will have to be done sooner or
later unless the now general acceptance of evolution is to be shaken
more rudely than some of its upholders may anticipate. I propose
therefore to give a short biographical sketch of the three writers whose
works form new departures in the history of evolution, with a somewhat
full _resume_ of the positions they took in regard to it. I will also
touch briefly upon some other writers who have handled the same subject.
The reader will thus be enabled to follow the development of a great
conception as it has grown up in the minds of successive men of genius,
and by thus growing with it, as it were, through its embryonic stages,
he will make himself more thoroughly master of it in all its bearings.

I will then contrast the older with the newer Darwinism, and will show
why the 'Origin of Species,' though an episode of incalculable value,
cannot, any more than the 'Vestiges of Creation,' take permanent rank in
the literature of evolution.

It will appear that the evolution of evolution has gone through the
following principal stages:--

I. A general conception of the fact that specific types were not always
immutable.

This was common to many writers, both ancient and m