ly's
article, "Evolution in Philosophy", ibid. pages 751-772.), whom Huxley
ranked beside Lamarck, was on the whole Buffonian, attaching chief
importance to the influence of a changeful environment both in modifying
and in eliminating, but he was also Goethian, for instance in his idea
that species like individuals pass through periods of growth, full
bloom, and decline. "Thus, it is not only the great catastrophes of
Nature which have caused extinction, but the completion of cycles
of existence, out of which new cycles have begun." A characteristic
sentence is quoted by Prof. Osborn: "In every living being there exists
a capability of an endless variety of form-assumption; each possesses
the power to adapt its organisation to the changes of the outer world,
and it is this power, put into action by the change of the universe,
that has raised the simple zoophytes of the primitive world to
continually higher stages of organisation, and has introduced a
countless variety of species into 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