The Project Gutenberg eBook, Pioneers of Evolution from Thales to Huxley, by Edward Clodd
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Title: Pioneers of Evolution from Thales to Huxley With an Intermediate Chapter on the Causes of Arrest of the Movement
Release Date: April 24, 2012 [eBook #39526]
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PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION FROM THALES TO HUXLEY
With an Intermediate Chapter on the Causes of Arrest of the Movement
President of the Folk-Lore Society Author of the Childhood of the World, The Story of Creation, The Story of Primitive Man, etc.
Copyright, 1897, by D. Appleton and Company.
This book needs only brief introduction. It attempts to tell the story of the origin of the Evolution idea in Ionia, and, after long arrest, of the revival of that idea in modern times, when its profound and permanent influence on thought in all directions, and, therefore, on human relations and conduct, is apparent.
Between birth and revival there were the centuries of suspended animation, when the nepenthe of dogma drugged the reason; the Church teaching, and the laity mechanically accepting, the sufficiency of the Scriptures and of the General Councils to decide on matters which lie outside the domain of both. Hence the necessity for particularizing the causes which actively arrested advance in knowledge for sixteen hundred years.