ABSTRACT
During the zenith of the power of Darwinism it was considered in certain quarters that one of the chief missions of cultural history was to seek after "pre-Darwinists." It was obvious that in such circumstances aspirants to this honour should come forward in large numbers; to begin with, the old Greek natural philosophers Anaximandros and Empedocles were named, and the number increased the nearer one came to modern times. There came another period when the list of personalities thus accumulated could be used to depreciate Darwin, as Kohlbrugge used it. 1 If, however, we damp our enthusiasm somewhat and have regard to actual facts, we shall find that the precursors of Darwin were far fewer. He himself has acknowledged the influence that he derived from Lyell's geological theories and Malthus's studies of population, and it seems only fair when reviewing a scientist's development to take into consideration his own remarks on the subject. If we do this, we get two preconditions for the origin of the Darwinian theory—a natural scientific, or, more exactly, a geological, and a socio-political. We shall now proceed to consider the former of these two.
