QUATREFAGES - CHARLES DARWIN AND HIS PREDECESSORS 1873

CHARLES DARWIN AND HIS PREDECESSORS

A STUDY ON THE THEORY OF TRANSFORMATION / KAROL DARWIN I JEGO POPRZEDNICY. Studyjum nad teoryją przeobrażeń 

The work of Adolphe Quatrefages 

Translated by Julian Ochorowicz

Warsaw 1873, Gebethner and Wolff Bookstore, pp. XV, XXIV, 325; size 13x18.5 cm

"A few words from the translator: Quatrefages is an opponent of Darwin - but one of the few opponents who reproaches his theory with nothing but pure science. The work that I am presenting to Polish readers in translation has a double value: for science and for the general public. For science - because it sums up all the objections that can be made only from the standpoint of positive knowledge of Darwin's theory; for the general public - because it gives a clear and exact idea of ​​the whole range of the subject under consideration, namely, presenting Darwin's theory in the most accessible and faithful summary.Here is what Mrs. Clementine Royer says on this subject, in the preface to the French translation of Darwin's first work: His summary of Darwin's theory is so impartial, so clear, so accurate, that it will doubtless make its principles easily understandable to a great many minds accustomed to the colloquial pronunciation of literary language rather than to the dry scientific exposition and exact reasoning of On the Origin of Species. Of the most important laws discovered by Charles Darwin, Mr. Quatrefages has presented more clearly and ornately than the author himself, and though an eminent anthropologist, he may not always have fully grasped all their importance, all their conclusions, all their relations to one another, though he did not always perceive that they override these are his own objections; though some of them he has somewhat neglected--with all this, his entertaining study of general natural history is an excellent dissection of the theory of metamorphosis, which may serve as an introduction to the Origin of Species (Charles Darwin. De l'origine des éspeces, trad. de M-e Clémence Royer, 3rd edition, Paris 1870, XI-XII.). I should add a few words about the additions that have been included in this work. The very title of the original (Charles Darwin et ses précurseurs français) indicates that they referred only to Darwin's French predecessors. Such one-sidedness made the work less of an exhaustive study of the historical development of the theory of transformation. For this reason I decided to supplement the summary of the views of the French naturalists with the views of German and English. Thus the number of eight antecedents of Darwin given in Quatrefages increased to forty-one - and I believe that by this completion the picture of the development of the whole theory became fuller and more accurate. I have summarized the German theories after Haeckel, and the English ones after Darwin himself."

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