Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/91

Rh But it has not been through such violence alone that the influence of the Hebrew tradition has been felt. More subtly did it discourage the great anatomist, Vesalius, who, in the flower of his young manhood, filled with the spirit of the pioneer, linked his fortunes to the throne of Charles and Philip. It is significant that, while he idly fretted out his life on Spanish soil, Suarez, the Spanish Jesuit, was born, destined to create the doctrine of special creation in its modern form by reaffirming in detail the Mosaic account of the creation—even the episode of the rib. The fact carries a suggestion of the reason why the productive years of that great progressive in biological science were limited to five, and ended with his thirtieth anniversary.

It was against this anachronistic doctrine of special creation, crystallized out of the civilization of the seventeenth century, that Darwin launched his great argument in the shape of the "Origin of Species." But, in doing so, he found in his opponents Hebrew tradition mixed with Greek. Evolution was not a conception hostile to the mind of Aristotle, though what we now recognize as phenomena of evolution did not especially engage his attention. The two rather ambiguous passages in which he arranges living creation in a series of closely intergrading types might be interpreted in terms of evolution without doing essential violence to his general conception of life. The origin of species of organic beings was not with him an issue. He was unaffected by the Mosaic record. Historical problems were to him of less moment than essential relations of structure and function. His especial interest in the ultimate analysis of truth was not, however, incompatible with an admission of the transformation of organic types. Indeed, under the influence of Aristotelian philosophy, St. Augustine himself sought to interpret the Mosaic cosmology with its conception of an external Creator, in naturalistic terms that should harmonize with the Greek conception of forces and potentialities inherent in the universe itself. It is this mixed derivation that complicates to some extent attempts to trace to their origins the ideas of the modern world.

There was no fundamental incompatibility then, between Greek tradition and the doctrine of descent with modification. As an evolutionist, Aristotle was at least as modern as Charles Bonnet. Were he alive to-day, I should confidently look for him in the foremost ranks of biological thinkers. His biological contributions, however, have been largely obscured by his versatility of interest in final causes. This interest I am disposed to believe was a product of his time, of the age into which he was born, of his education, his companionships, rather than a fundamental tendency of his mind. However it may be interpreted, there is no doubt that his ideas on transformism in organic nature were definitely limited thereby. If he was an evolutionist, he was also a teleologist. Adaptation in nature spelled for him design.