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 might be
added to. Especially when we come near to 1858 do the numbers increase,
and one of the most remarkable, as also most independent champions of
the evolution-idea before that date was Herbert Spencer, who not only
marshalled the arguments in a very forcible way in 1852, but applied the
formula in detail in his "Principles of Psychology" in 1855. (See Edward
Clodd, "Pioneers of Evolution", London, page 161, 1897.)

It is right and proper that we should shake ourselves free from all
creationist appreciations of Darwin, and that we should recognise the
services of pre-Darwinian evolutionists who helped to make the time
ripe, yet one cannot help feeling that the citation of them is apt to
suggest two fallacies. It may suggest that D