Page:Carroll Lane Fenton - A History of Evolution (1922).djvu/29

 26 doms in order to make the study of them orderly and comprehensible. The great philosopher's passion for accuracy, although an unusual and most creditable character in an age noted for its loose thought and wild speculation, prevented him from seeing the great significance of his own work. When man is able to comprehend a problem, and to state it in clear, accurate language, the solution of that problem is almost assured. The final triumph may be years, or even centuries away, but its eventual coming need hardly be questioned.

Henry Fairfield Osborn, noted evolutionist and paleontologist, divides the evolutionists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries into three groups—the natural philosophers, the speculative writers, and the great naturalists.

The speculative writers were a heterogenous group of men, partly philosophers, partly naturalists, and partly of various other professions. They were, in the main, untrained in accurate, inductive, scientific investigation, and depended upon the Greeks for most of their theory. They differed from the philosophers, some of whom we have already studied, in that their ideas were boldly advanced without any support of observation, or the slightest regard for scientific methods. Some of them were, for their day, immensely popular writers, and their