Chapter One—
Reception

Reforms and the Spirit of Science

After the Crimean War Russia entered a period of national awakening that invited a critical reassessment of dominant values and social bonds and engendered a strong sentiment in favor of sweeping political and social reforms. The reigning ideologies of the time favored natural science as the most reliable source of guideposts for social and cultural progress. A. I. Herzen spoke for the age when he noted that "without natural science there can be no salvation for modern man; without that healthy nourishment, that vigorous elevation of thought based on facts, and that proximity to the realities of life . . . our soul would continue to be a monastery cell, veiled in mysticism spreading darkness over our thoughts."^[1]

Another writer saw in the 1860s an accelerated growth of secular interpretations of the universe, both physical and social. This was the time, he said, of the search for "a substitution of anthropology for religion, inductive method for deductive method, materialistic monism for idealistic dualism, empirical aesthetics for abstract aesthetics, and the theory of rational egotism for morality based on supersensory principles."^[2] In a reference to university education, a famous embryologist, educated in the 1860s, noted that the students were particularly attracted to scientific articles published in general journals and to translations of popular scientific works. The younger generation showed a particularly strong interest in the new theories of nature and in their close links with positivist and materialist philosophy.^[3]

The preoccupation with scientific ideas, and with philosophical views

on the cultural preeminence of science, appeared in many forms and came from many sources. The initial outburst came from the rapidly rising popularity of the scientific-philosophical writings of the new breed of German materialists represented by Ludwig Büchner, Karl Vogt, and Jacob Moleschott. The Russian intelligentsia favored the criticism of metaphysical idealism which these studies supplied in great abundance; but they also favored the profuse and laudatory comments on science as a source of models for a radical transformation of society and culture. When Bazarov, the hero of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, suggested that reading Büchner was much more profitable than reciting Pushkin's poetry, he acted as a true spokesman for nihilism, the most radical philosophy of the epoch. Vogt, Büchner, and Moleschott reinforced two guiding ideological principles of the restive intelligentsia: positivist faith in the limitless power of science, and historicism. Their tight interweaving of natural science facts and theories with the precepts of an ideology that opposed the social and cultural status quo found a particularly strong Russian following.

The growth of the popular appeal of science during the 1860s was closely related to the rising popularity of French positivism, as presented by Auguste Comte and his French disciples and as interpreted by John Stuart Mill. Positivism presented science as a new intellectual force that grew on the ruins of religious and metaphysical thought. It produced a separation of sociology from eighteenth-century metaphysics. To give his defense of positivism more weight, a Russian commentator assured his readers in 1865 that the leading minds in western Europe had accepted Comte's designs for a scientific study of society. When G. M. Vyrubov became coeditor of the Paris Revue de philosophie positive in 1867 his countrymen went far afield in commenting on the rich promise of the Comtian philosophical legacy. Eager to encourage and to justify this endeavor, A. P. Shchapov noted in 1870 that "French, Italian, English, and German literature is being rapidly enriched by the new books written in the spirit of positive philosophy."^[4] P. L. Lavrov informed his readers that positivism was a philosophy built on scientific foundations and that in France "physicians and graduates of the Polytechnical School are in a majority among the followers of positivism."^[5] A contemporary scholar described Lavrov's philosophical stance as a blend of Young Hegelianism, Comte's positivism, and Darwin's and Spencer's evolutionism.^[6]

Buckle attracted more attention in Russia than anywhere else on the European continent.^[7] The intelligentsia favored the History of Civiliza -

tion in England (1857–61), Buckle's historical opus, because it treated science as the prime mover of social progress and, above everything else, as a true backbone of democratic institutions. It represented an effort "to interpret the infinite variety of personal and national actions as concrete manifestations of the general and immutable laws of nature."^[8] Only science, according to him, can supply knowledge that reaches deep into the mysteries of nature and is essentially objective. The study of society can be objective only if it relies on the models of the physical sciences. Buckle recognized only one history—the history based on the scientific method. He was "particularly popular" because he "erased providentialism from history, denied the freedom of the will, and used statistics to explain social life."^[9] The leaders of the intelligentsia relied on Buckle to reinforce their belief in the enormous fecundity of a combination of historical relativism and scientific objectivism. In their eyes, Buckle went one long stride beyond Comte: whereas Comte treated history as a collection of raw material to be used by sociology as a fullblown science. Buckle viewed history as a complete science by itself.

Trying to explain why Buckle's History appeared in two Russian translations almost simultaneously and why both translations were ready to come out in second editions, M. A. Antonovich noted in 1864 that "it is possible that Buckle is more popular in our country than in England" and that "to talk about Buckle in Moscow and St. Petersburg has become as common as to talk about the weather."^[10] Buckle's ideas reached a wide spectrum of publications, ranging from scholarly papers to feuilletons.

Claude Bernard, whose Introduction to the Experimental Method in Medicine was quickly translated into Russian and became a most popular source of arguments in favor of scientific knowledge, appealed particularly to groups avoiding philosophical and ideological extremism. These groups liked Bernard's skillful moves in defending the strengths of scientific thinking without underrating aesthetic expression, philosophical contemplation, and other nonscientific modes of inquiry. Shchapov likened Bernard's type of philosophy to an excellente gymnastique de l'esprit, sharpening conceptual thinking and critical judgment and giving the world view a cosmic scope.^[11] While philosophy elevates the intellect, science gives it substance that stays close to objective reality. Shchapov surmised that Bernard favored the "impersonal authority" of science over the "personal" orientation of an. The element of impersonality, in his opinion, helps science work for human society as a totality and to propound a democratic ideology.^[12] Or, as Bernard put it: "Art is myself;

science is ourselves." The Origin of Species, Darwin's classic, stood out as a majestic monument to the Bernardian dictum that real science consists of three phases: "an observation made, a comparison established, and a judgment rendered."^[13] N. N. Strakhov's astute discussion of the Introduction showed clearly that Bernard appealed not only to persons enamored with the currently fashionable "natural science materialism" but also to those who did not favor an alliance of science and materialism.^[14]

In the middle of the eighteenth century, the philosophes, the masters of the French Enlightenment, undertook the ambitious task of writing the Grand Encyclopedia, a popular survey and a synthesis of contemporary knowledge about nature and human society and culture. At the very beginning of the 1860s the idea of a grand encyclopedia received strong support in Russia. The organizers of the monumental project had no trouble in recruiting 208 contributors to the vast enterprise and in selecting fourteen editors in charge of particular branches of knowledge.^[15] Among the contributors were such eminent scientists as the embryologist and anthropologist Karl von Baer, the mathematician P. L. Chebyshev, the geographer P. P. Semenov, and the crystallographer A. V. Gadolin. The enterprise produced six volumes (five of them covering the letter A) before it collapsed. It was overambitious—conservative estimates called for two hundred volumes for the full set. Serious critics thought that the country was not ready for an intellectual undertaking of such gigantic scope. The spirit of the time favored such an enterprise, particularly when judged by the rapid growth of interest in disciplined and systematic knowledge. The reasons for the collapse of the enterprise must be sought in the disproportionate and asymmetrical distribution of experts in the main branches of organized knowledge, in the persistence of government and church interference, and in the absence of a clear vision of the cultural and social role of such a project.

Russia's Forerunners of Darwin

Russian—particularly Soviet—historians of science have produced voluminous literature on Darwin's precursors in their country. B. E. Raikov's monumental Russian Biologists-Evolutionists Before Darwin, in four volumes totaling over fifteen hundred pages, was only the beginning of a determined search for historical information depicting the growth of transformist ideas in the Russia of the pre-Darwinian age. The results of this ambitious undertaking allow us to draw two general conclusions.

First, the idea of evolution received support from a wide spectrum of intellectual endeavor, but mainly from the representatives of the natural sciences: from botanists and zoologists, geologists and paleontologists, embryologists and morphologists. Second, no Russian writer of the pre-Darwinian age had undertaken an elaborate and systematic study in the field. There were no Russian Lamarcks or Chamberses.

M. A. Maksimovich, professor of botany at Moscow University during the 1820s and 1830s, combined an early influence of Oken's Naturphilosophie with a strong sense for the concrete offerings of natural history. From Oken he borrowed a cellular outlook on life, an idea of the unity of inorganic and organic nature, a holistic view of living objects, and a strong inclination to stress the evolutionary fluidity of plant and animal species. Nature, he wrote in 1827, represents "an unbroken chain of objects in constant change." Evolution is always gradual and increases the complexity of natural objects. The stability of species is more apparent than real. Species are varieties with deeper roots in the evolutionary process. Maksimovich made no effort either to systematize his evolutionary ideas or to place them within a more elaborate theoretical framework.^[16]

G. E. Shchurovskii, another professor at Moscow University, who also passed through a phase of enthusiasm for Naturphilosophie, worked first in comparative anatomy and then in geology. In Animal Organology he was under the spell of É. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's views on the morphological and physiological unity of organisms. Although he did not present a direct discussion of organic evolution, he dwelt extensively in the world of concepts that opened the gates for a scientific approach to the idea of transformism. For example, he was conversant with the evolutionary connotations of the ideas of homology and analogy, the former referring to similarity in structures of corresponding organs, the latter to similarity in corresponding functions.^[17] Shchurovskii based his biological arguments on the premise that animal organs are parts of an integrated whole and that each performs not only a specific but also a general function. Each is subject to constant modifications, both on functional and on morphological levels. According to Shchurovskii, a scientific study of modifications should reveal both the unity and the diversity of organic nature.^[18] The homology of the corresponding organs of different species and the diversity of animal forms are two sides of the same natural order. The knowledge of this duality reveals the universal laws of nature.

Among the Russian precursors of Darwin three scientists occupied preeminent positions: Karl von Baer, a distinguished member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, K. F. Rul'e, professor of natural history at Moscow University, and A. N. Beketov, a graduate of Kazan University and subsequently professor of botany at St. Petersburg University.^[19]

Karl von Baer represented the culminating point of a strong tradition in pre-Darwinian embryology in Russia built by the scientists of German origin. Caspar Friedrich Wolff, the founder of this tradition and a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences from 1767 to 1794, is considered the creator of the theory of epigenesis, an essential ingredient of the evolutionary idea in biology. In opposition to the theory of preformation, the theory of epigenesis considered every organism a new formation—a result of unique internal and external influences. Christian Heinrich Pander, a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences from 1820 to 1827, is in one important respect considered the founder of embryology as a distinct discipline. He was the first to detect and to undertake a study of the three layers of cells that are differentiated in the early stages of embryonic development: the ectoderm, the endoderm, and the mesoderm. He combined his interpretation of embryonic development with a general evolutionary view of organic nature.

Karl von Baer carried the tradition established by Wolff and Pander to new heights. A founder of comparative embryology and a powerful link between the budding embryology, the evolutionary spirit of Naturphilosophie, and Cuvier's catastrophism, he contributed enough to the transmutation theory to attract Darwin's attention as one of his distinguished predecessors. Darwin wrote in the Origin of Species: "Von Baer, toward whom all zoologists feel so profound a respect, expressed about the year 1859 . . . his conviction, chiefly grounded on the laws of geographical distribution, that forms now perfectly distinct have descended from a single parent-form."^[20] Darwin could not but appreciate von Baer's observation that "the embryos of mammalia, of birds, lizards, and snakes, probably also of Cheldonia are in their earliest states exceedingly like one another, both as a whole and in the mode of development of their parts; so much so, in fact, that we can often distinguish the embryos only by their size."^[21] Darwin had in mind von Baer's proposition that during their embryonic development animals gradually depart from the more general structural patterns.^[22] Only a few months before the publication of the Origin of Species, von Baer wrote that many forms which at the present time appear as isolated propagating units

had developed from a single species.^[23] He added that he was not ready to take a stand on the relative importance of "the development of one species from another" and on spontaneous generation.^[24]

L. Ia. Bliakher, a distinguished historian of nineteenth-century biology, claimed that von Baer's pre-Darwinian ideas had gone through two distinct stages of development. During the first stage, covering his early studies in zoology and comparative anatomy, von Baer did not concern himself with organic evolution. He made frequent references to similarities between various taxonomic groups of animals as aids in systematics, but he avoided any suggestion related to the problem of organic evolution. Transformism was clearly outside his sphere of interest. In places he used such terms as "resemblance" and "affinity" interchangeably, but his usage of "affinity" did not imply genealogical relationship or common ancestry.^[25]

During the second stage, the period of heavy involvement in embryonic studies and for a while afterward, von Baer thought of the possibility of evolutionary change, occasionally recognizing blood relationship and common ancestry within individual types of animals. He came to the conclusion about the possibility of organic evolution within comparatively narrow limits. He firmly rejected the idea of transformation from one type of animal to another. In a laconic statement, I. I. Mechnikov presented von Baer as a biologist "who opposed the theory of unlimited transmutation of species and of the origin of animals by transformation but who recognized limited variability."^[26] Where von Baer allowed for transformation, he based it on the geographical factor, not on embryological dynamics. Where he allowed for evolution as a universal process, he treated it as a gradual triumph of "spirit" over "matter," a metaphysical crutch of Naturphilosophie .^[27]

S. R. Mikulinskii has made two observations that must be taken into consideration in appraising von Baer's contributions to the pool of knowledge that helped Darwin formulate his general theory of evolution. First, von Baer's division of the animal kingdom into four types was not a copy of Cuvier's division. Whereas Cuvier based his division on comparative-anatomical material, von Baer depended on both comparative-anatomical and embryological material. Cuvier considered "types" as clearly separated and mutually impenetrable entities. Von Baer, by contrast, mentioned the possibility of transitional types, thus suggesting gradual transformation as a universal process in organic nature. Second, von Baer is known in the annals of science as the founder of animal embryology. His embryological work did not lead him to a

consideration of transformism. His research, however, did establish the embryological unity of vertebrates, an idea that gave strong, though indirect, support to Darwin's conclusions related to the evolution of animals.^[28]

K. F. Rul'e wrote in Russian and was a popular lecturer at Moscow University and at mushrooming public forums. Superb oratorical skills helped his evolutionary ideas reach a considerably wider segment of the educated public in Russia than did those of von Baer, presented mainly in German and strained by a format of tight logical argumentation. Rul'e worked in an unusually wide field, but his most noted and lasting studies dealt with the geology and paleontology of the Moscow basin.^[29] Since animals, he said, depended on the environment, it would be paradoxical to assume that changes in the environment did not produce changes in the forms of life. It was not enough, in his view, to establish morphological similarities and differences between presently existing and extinct animals; it was equally important to trace their actual genealogical ties.^[30] He thought that the main task of biology—and of paleontology—is to study regularities in the historical development of living forms.^[31] In 1881 the zoologist Ia. A. Borzenkov commented on the impression the Origin of Species had made on him and his colleagues:

We read Darwin's book, which reached Moscow (in Bronn's German translation) at the time when the memory of Rul'e was still fresh in our minds. The new book did not repeat exactly what we had learned from Rul'e, but the ideas it presented were so close to those Rul'e had passed on to us that we felt we had been familiar with them for a long time. The only exception was that Darwin's book presented these ideas with more clarity, more scientific rigor, and incomparably richer backing of factual information.^[32]

D. N. Anuchin wrote in 1886 that Rul'e advanced evolutionary ideas similar to Darwin's several years before the publication of the Origin of Species . Rul'e criticized the reigning—Linnean—idea of "species" as a biological category, talked about the important role of environment in the transformation of organisms, discussed the problems of variation and hereditary transmission of characteristics, and advanced the idea of progress as applied to organic forms. He derived his transformist ideas from two kinds of sources: fossils exhibited in museums and direct observations of organic nature.^[33]

In early 1860 the popular journal Russian Herald carried an article entitled "Harmony in Nature," written just before Darwin's classic was published. The article, by A. N. Beketov, provided another proof that

the idea of organic evolution had attracted Russian naturalists before Darwin had made it the central theme of a new stream of biological thought. Written in a popular vein, the article stated that changes in the environment are direct sources of change in living forms. Obviously impressed with Lamarck's transformist ideas, Beketov argued that the law of the double adaptation of species—the functional adaptation of organs to the organism as an indivisible whole, and the adaptation of the whole to the surrounding environment—is the law that governs the gradual transformation of the living world and determines the survival or extinction of individual species.^[34] Implicit in Beketov's argument is the general idea that nature undergoes constant and irreversible change that takes place according to regular and universal laws of nature. It is not important whether Beketov adhered closely to the ideas advanced by Lamarck and É. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire or anticipated the crucial points of Darwin's theory; what is important is that he showed clearly that Russian scholarship had become ready to accept evolution as the core idea of biology.^[35]

Popular Appeal

Educated contemporaries were fully aware of the unalloyed enthusiasm with which Russians received Darwin's works. According to the embryologist A. O. Kovalevskii, who started his distinguished career in the middle of the 1860s, Darwin's theory was afforded a most sympathetic and enthusiastic reception in Russia. The arrival of the new evolutionary thought in Russia coincided with a general national awakening that produced the great reforms of the 1860s. Darwin's book received immediate recognition as a turning point in the history of science.^[36] Kovalevskii made this statement in 1882. Writing in the same vein, I. I. Mechnikov, a famous embryologist and evolutionary pathologist, had observed that the evolutionary theory was readily accepted in Russia not only because the general conditions favored it but also because it did not encounter a strong antievolutionary tradition.^[37]

Sir Charles Lyell introduced Darwin's theory to the Russian reading public. In January 1860, two months after the publication of the Origin of Species, the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education published a Russian translation of Lyell's report to the twenty-ninth meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held in September 1859, in which the eminent geologist referred to the revolutionary significance of Darwin's forthcoming book. It appeared to Lyell that

Darwin had succeeded "by his investigations and reasonings, in throwing a flood of light on many classes of phenomena connected with the affinities, geographical distribution, and geological succession of organic beings, for which no other hypothesis has been able, or has attempted, to account."^[38] Lyell gave full support to Darwin's conclusion that the same powers of nature produce both varieties in plants and animals and new species over longer periods of time. In his introductory remarks on Lyell's report, N. N. Strakhov, the Russian translator and commentator, noted that the reason for the dominance of antitransformist views in biology, most categorically expressed by Cuvier, must be sought in the too narrow empiricist orientation of naturalists, who were much more careful in gathering reliable facts than in drawing generalized conclusions. He noted that in the nineteenth century the defenders of the creationist orientation could no longer ignore the mounting empirical evidence in favor of transformism. Strakhov criticized H. G. Bronn, the German zoologist who in 1858 received a prize from the Paris Academy of Sciences for a work that categorically denied the possibility of the origin of species by means of "the transformation of a small number of primeval forms of life."^[39]

In 1860 S. S. Kutorga, a professor at St. Petersburg University, presented his students with a general review of the basic ideas contained in the Origin of Species . At the end of the same year, N. P. Vagner, professor at Kazan University, read a paper on Cuvier and É. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in which he briefly referred to Darwin's contribution to the triumph of the transformist view in biology. It was also in 1860 that a series of translated articles appeared in the Herald of Natural Sciences, an organ of the Moscow Society of Naturalists. Among the published articles was Thomas Huxley's report on Darwin's theory read before the members of the Royal Institution on February 10, I860.^[40] All articles selected for publication in the Herald were clearly pro-Darwinian. A conservative and aristocratic organization, the Moscow Society of Naturalists stopped publishing articles on Darwin as soon as his theory blossomed into a major controversy of the age. Despite this retreat, the Herald deserved credit for having been one of the first Russian journals to offer a detailed description of Darwin's evolutionary views.

In 1861 the journal Library for Reading published an essay on the Origin of Species that was more systematic and more comprehensive than any previous study on the subject published in Russian. Over two hundred pages in length, the article appeared in two installments. The

anonymous writer left no doubt about his wholehearted acceptance of Darwin's evolutionary ideas and about his firm belief in the revolutionary significance of the new theory.^[41] Of all theories dealing with the origin of species, Darwin's was superior because, in his view, it offered the simplest, most logical, and most satisfactory explanations. The strength of the article was in the lucidity of its substantive part and in the precision and symmetry of its analysis of the theoretical foundations of the new evolutionary idea. The reader was treated to a bonanza of welldigested information on the leading forerunners of Darwin's theory, particularly on Goethe, Lamarck, Étienne and Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and A. R. Wallace.^[42]

The essay was impressive also on two additional counts. First, the author carefully pointed out the ideas Darwin had suggested that required further study and elaboration. Second, he gave his readers a taste of the earliest criticism directed at Darwin's theory. For example, he mentioned Pictet, a Geneva University professor, who thought that variation could not lead to the emergence of new species, and who proposed a kind of limited transformism that satisfied the followers of Cuvier and Agassiz. Pictet, however, went so far as to recognize the role of natural selection in the preservation of heritable variation.^[43] The anonymous writer saw the greatest contribution of the Origin of Species in its setting the stage for a scientific study of the origin of life—the greatest of all mysteries.

Another journal saw Darwin's evolutionary idea as "an inevitable result of the basic theoretical orientation of modern science" and as the crowning point of a long and careful accumulation of scientific ideas. Darwin's influence, according to this journal, was destined to be felt far beyond the boundaries of biology.^[44] The author presented natural selection as an irrefutable generalization derived from a vast reservoir of empirical data.

The first number of the Russian Herald for 1863 published "Flowers and Insects," a beautifully written essay, rich in naturalist observations on the relations of plants and animals to each other and to the environment, both geographical and geological. The purpose of the article was clearly to show the marvels of the works of nature as portrayed by the Origin of Species . Relying on florid expressions and poetic spontaneity, the author—S. A. Rachinskii, professor of botany at Moscow University—explained every major component of Darwin's theoretical structure in a language that was accessible to the general reading public. He identified the Origin of Species as "one of the most brilliant books ever

to be written in the natural sciences." The basic contribution of this work, as Rachinskii saw it, was in indicating, first, the genealogical links between organisms of different kinds and, second, the "marvellous adaptation" of these organisms to the inorganic world^[45] It gave a perspicuous description of the work of natural selection, and it explained the divergence of living forms as an index of the work of evolution. It presented the transformation of plants and animals as a result of the evolutionary process characterized by gradual and continuous change. Rachinskii thought that, although Darwin's theory gave an accurate description of the evolutionary dynamics of the living universe, it still had a long way to travel on the road to full empirical corroboration.

In 1864 Rachinskii produced the first Russian translation of the Origin . Although not a masterwork of translation, the book sold out so quickly that in 1865 it went through a second printing. By this time Darwin's ideas had reached not only scientists and popularizers but also persons eager to integrate evolutionary thought into ideologically oriented writings. M. A. Antonovich in Contemporary greeted Darwin primarily as a master of scientific thought destined to cause drastic changes in the world outlook of the new generation.^[46] He viewed the Origin as a major victory for the democratic spirit of the scientific method over the authoritarian sway of metaphysical speculation. He left no doubt about his firm belief in the close interdependence of science and democracy. The strengths of the Origin, as he saw them, were not only in the emphasis on the natural causation of organic evolution but also in the lucidity of its prose and the power of empirical documentation on which it rested. In Darwin's evolutionary idea and the current triumph of the experimental method in physiology he saw the beginning of a new phase in the growth of biology.

Among the men trained in science, N. N. Strakhov and K. A. Timiriazev became widely known as the first Russian popularizers of Darwin's ideas. In his graduation paper at St. Petersburg University, Strakhov presented three original algebraic theories giving solutions for inequalities of the first degree.^[47] This paper, as well as his master's thesis dealing with the wristbones of mammals, appeared in the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education . After his effort to obtain a university position had failed, Strakhov became a free-lance writer contributing to several popular journals. In an article published in Dostoevsky's journal Time in 1862, he surveyed Darwin's ideas and criticized the efforts of Clémence Royer, the French translator of the Origin of Species, to give Darwinian theory a broader sociological meaning. He particularly ob-

jected to Royer's claim that Darwin's scientific ideas provided proof that every search for political equality of all human races was predestined to be an utter failure.^[48] Strakhov may rightfully be called the first Russian scholar to stand firmly against Social Darwinism, a blend of sociology and ideology which did not have a single supporter among the leading Russian naturalists and social thinkers. Strakhov greeted Darwin's theory as a strong addition to science and a modern world view. Darwin, in his opinion, made two revolutionary contributions to biology and the modern world outlook: he made biology a solid science based on a historical view of nature, and he brought an end to the reign of the metaphysical view of organic nature.^[49] Although Darwin's theory did not answer all the intricate questions of biological evolution, it was built on sound foundations.^[50]

P. A. Bibikov, an unheralded writer, took it upon himself to refute Strakhov's criticism of Royer's position as a defender of Social Darwinism. His argument was simple and direct: he preferred Royer's faith in "science" to Strakhov's attachment to "sentimental philosophy," which looked for the heights of wisdom outside the domain of scientific knowledge.^[51] To him, the social struggle for existence and the resultant social inequality were not only in full accord with Darwin's biological principles but also well-documented historical realities. "The law of the supremacy of the naturally selected and strong over the feeble and degenerate has always been in force."^[52] Very few contemporary Russian writers were ready to go along with Bibikov's line of argument.

Despite his deep and enthusiastic involvement in the popularization of Darwin's ideas during the years immediately after the publication of the Origin of Species, Strakhov did not represent a typical Russian Darwinist of the 1860s: he did not allow Darwin's natural science "materialism" to displace his own brand of idealistic philosophy.^[53] He admitted that Darwin's ideas came to Russia at the time when materialism was a reigning philosophy; but he was equally ready to state that the demise of idealism was a transitory phenomenon and to fight for a revitalization of antimaterialistic philosophy. He endorsed Rudolf Virchow's dictum that "sick idealism" should be transformed into "healthy idealism" rather than be condemned as advocated by the nihilist intelligentsia.^[54] A decade later, an idealistic philosophical bias predisposed Strakhov to undertake a vicious attack on The Descent of Man as a caricature of empirical science and a flagrant attack on the moral foundations of human society.^[55] He became one of the most belligerent Russian anti-Darwinists of the nineteenth century.

Kliment Timiriazev, a pioneer in plant physiology, was the first scholar educated in the atmosphere of the Great Reforms to help spread the basic ideas of the new evolutionary orientation. Like many scientists of the 1860s who came from noble families of rapidly declining fortunes, he combined an insatiable thirst for scientific knowledge with a profound dedication to democratic ideals and to the philosophy of "realism" advanced by the nihilist movement. He enrolled in St. Petersburg University in 1861, a year marked by growing student unrest that led to the frequent closing of the university. Before graduating in 1866 he had written "Garibaldi in Caprera," "The Hunger in Lancashire," and "Darwin's Book: Its Critics and Commentators," all published in the influential journal Fatherland Notes (Otechestvennye zapiski) in 1863– 64. The Darwin article was immediately republished as a small book entitled Charles Darwin and His Theory . This study provided several generations of Russian students with a pertinent and vivid exposition of Darwinian evolutionary thought.^[56]

Timiriazev discussed three different aspects of Darwin's work on the theory of evolution. First, he gave a detailed discussion of variation among pigeons, which led him to conclude that it was impossible to draw a clear line between a "variety" and a "species" and that variation can best be interpreted as the beginning of a new species. He concluded not only that organic transformation is a universal process but also that the common origin of all species can be assumed. Second, he analyzed the process of change as Darwin presented it. He accepted the struggle for existence and natural selection without notable digression from Darwin's interpretation. He showed a clear inclination to interpret intraspecies competition as the prime mover of evolution.^[57] Third, he admitted that paleontology was not an adequate source of information, because it did not throw clear light on transitional forms, indispensable for empirical verification of transformism. While ready to treat the new theory as a hypothesis, he firmly believed in its ultimate triumph. No doubt, Timiriazev, like Darwin, thought that the future of the new theory would depend on the evidence produced by embryology, comparative anatomy, and related disciplines, as much, if not more, than on the data supplied by paleontology. He concluded his long review by citing the concluding paragraph of the Origin in which Darwin meditated about the two great laws that governed the planet earth: gravitation and evolution.^[58]

Although Timiriazev provided the first link between the interpreters of evolution in the academic community and the nihilist intelligentsia,

his book on Darwin contained no statements of direct ideological import. In at least one respect, he stood in direct opposition to D. I. Pisarev, the leader of nihilism. In the famous conflict between Pouchet and Pasteur, centered on spontaneous generation as a source of new forms of life, Timiriazev supported Pasteur's claim that "all life comes from life"—and that no known scientific facts supported spontaneous generation.^[59] While science could not answer the question of the emergence of the first forms of life, it had gathered enough strength, thanks to Darwin, to ascertain the unity of organic forms based on common origin and certified by the existence of strong morphological similarities between individual species and by the absence of sharp lines separating different species.

There were indirect links between Timiriazev's essay and nihilist ideology. In the spirit of nihilism and in full agreement with Pisarev's thinking, Timiriazev credited Darwin with presenting the only true picture of nature: a picture that had no room for divine authority and interference with the work of nature. By prefacing his popular book with a statement of Auguste Comte's on selection as a source of harmony between organisms and the changing environment, he was eager to show that the scientific theory of evolution and the philosophical orientation of the nihilist intelligentsia, imbued with the spirit of Comtian philosophy, had much in common.

James A. Rogers has given an apposite description of Timiriazev's Darwinian affiliation:

Timiriazev's remarkable influence in the propagation of Darwinism came not only from his prestige as a scientist (he was a pioneer in the study of photosynthesis) but also from the widespread popularity which he had won with his open espousal of liberal political views. Darwinism had already been accepted enthusiastically by the radical younger intelligentsia of the 1860s who thought that they saw in the theory of the origin of species the possibility of unifying the development of all organic life under a nonmetaphysical theory which would provide a major support for their materialistic philosophies. Under the influence of Timiriazev's popular writings on Darwinism, this scientific theory soon became a pan of the political creed of all those persons who considered themselves progressive in social and political thought.^[60]

The Origin of Species was Darwin's first book to be translated into Russian. During the 1860s two additional works were translated. A Russian rendition of the Voyage of the Beagle appeared in 1865.^[61] A. N. Beketov, one of Darwin's most eminent and eloquent precursors, served

as the editor of the translation project. In August 1867 Darwin wrote to Lyell that a young Russian, who visited him in Down, "is translating my new book into Russian."^[62] The book was The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, and the young man was Vladimir Kovalevskii, who subsequently became a well-known evolutionary paleontologist. At that time The Variation was not yet published, and it seems most likely that the translation was made from a set of proofs Darwin had given to Kovalevskii. Thanks to Kovalevskii's rapid work, a Russian translation of the first volume of The Variation was published several months prior to the publication of the English original.^[63]

The rapid diffusion of evolutionary ideas created favorable conditions for a general discussion of Darwin's contributions. In an article published in February 1864 in the journal Messenger from Abroad (Zagranichnyi vestnik) J. Schönemann did exactly this; he not only described the Darwinian style in natural history, analyzed Lamarck's theory of evolution, and summed up the main arguments of the Origin, but also provided fascinating passages of general comment on the Copernican sweep of the Darwinian evolution in biology. He had no reservations in giving full support to Darwin's conceptualization of natural selection as the prime mover of the evolution of living forms.^[64]

The same journal gave its readers an opportunity to become familiar with Darwin's theory of evolution as a method applicable to a wide range of natural and social phenomena. A Russian translation of August Schleicher's "letter" to Ernst Haeckel, published in this journal in 1864, illustrated the applicability of Darwin's idea of the origin of species to the most puzzling question of the origin and evolution of language. He even transposed the Darwinian struggle for existence to the study of the survival and extinction of languages.^[65] By his own admission, the editor of the journal was particularly eager to show the applicability of Darwin's theory to the study of the universal attributes of culture.

A few years later, Sir John Lubbock's Prehistoric Times (1865) came out in a Russian translation. This work acquired prominence as "the first major study in archeology reconstructing not only human skeletons but the early phases of human society and culture as well." It represented a turning point in making archeology a study of man as both an animal and a creator (and a product) of culture. It offered the first comprehensive survey of empirical data showing the work of evolution on both biological and social levels. Well received in Russia, it created many new openings for the scientific study of evolutionary thought. Petr Lavrov observed in the journal Fatherland Notes in 1869 that anthro-

pology was in fact an application of Darwin's theory to the study of the origin and evolution of man. He thought that the idea of the anthropoid origin of man, because of its far-reaching consequences, would soon be recognized as one of the greatest triumphs of the human intellect.^[66]

Translation of Western works analyzing the nature of the new ideas played an equally important role in the diffusion of the key principles of Darwin's theory. Lyell's Antiquity of Man, T. H. Huxley's Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature, Karl Vogt's Lectures on Man and His Place in the Creation and the History of the Earth, and many articles on evolution written by leading scientists in and outside biology were translated into Russian in quick succession. While Lyell's work placed paleontological information behind the evolutionary theory, Huxley made challenging excursions into the biology of anthropoids and the major achievements of comparative embryology. Huxley performed a function that Darwin—in the Origin —had painstakingly avoided: he made the evolution of man the central theme of his study. He gave scientific backing to the nihilist ideology built on two pillars: the idea of the historical relativity of moral values and social institutions, and the view of the pursuit of natural science as the safest path to a virtuous life and a general betterment of human existence. He gave the evolutionary theory a much broader basis: he carried it from its scientific moorings into social thought. Like Huxley, Karl Vogt made excursions into all the basic sciences providing illustrative material for the grand law of organic evolution; unlike Lyell and Huxley, however, he favored a polygenic theory of the evolution of human races—a view that did not find strong support among the early Russian evolutionists. Translated into Russian in 1865, Vogt's Lectures was in many respects an expanded version of Huxley's Evidence and was particularly rich in anatomical details.

In addition to these works, all addressing themselves to the general public, there were also translations of technical studies in organic evolution appealing almost exclusively to a narrow circle of specialists. One of these studies was Fritz Müller's Für Darwin, the first serious effort to apply Darwin's theory to embryology. In undertaking an empirical study of the crustaceans, Müller was inspired by Darwin's assertion that embryology stands to make a substantial contribution to the transformist view of nature. Darwin thought that embryology could be of particular importance to the study of evolution because it was in an ideal position to throw light on the primeval history of species. He said: "As the embryo often shows us more or less plainly the structure of the less modified and ancient progenitor of the group, we can see why ancient

and extinct forms so often resemble in their adult state the embryos of existing species of the same class." "Embryology," he added, "rises greatly in interest, when we look at the embryo as a picture, more or less obscured, of the progenitor, either in its adult or larval state, of all the members of the same great class."^[67]

During the early 1860s Russian readers could read in their own language many Western science classics that, while not directly identified with Darwin's ideas, presented the salient theoretical and methodological advances in all branches of modern biology. Included in this list were Matthias Schleiden, The Plant and Its Life, Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, General Biology, and Claude Bernard, Introduction to the Experimental Method in Medicine . In 1865 Lyell's Principles of Geology was also published in a Russian translation. An earlier edition of this work had inspired young Darwin to dedicate his life to the study of organic evolution.

Countless writers referred to Darwin as a leading scientist but did not undertake an analysis of his contributions. They added significantly to the popularity of the new idea of organic transformism and of the historical orientation in biology. A. P. Shchapov, for example, did not make an effort to scrutinize and diffuse Darwin's ideas; but he made frequent references to Darwin as a giant of scientific thought. He placed him in the exclusive group of reigning scientists made up of Newton, Lavoisier, and Claude Bernard, the masters of "powerful reasoning" and the "real fountain" of great scientific ideas.^[68] Elsewhere, he placed Darwin, along with Lavoisier, Laplace, Watt, Cuvier, A. von Humboldt, and Liebig, among "the creators of modern science."^[69] Darwin, he contended, represented the type of scientific creativity that must find a functional place in Russian society as the most reliable mechanism for cultural progress. Darwin represented a "highly developed intellectual type" that was still absent in Russia.^[70]

Nihilism and Darwinism

Nihilism emerged in an atmosphere that made the liberal reforms of the 1860s not only a possibility but also a reality. It was an ideology that sought no compromise with the social and cultural values built into the autocratic system. It represented a unique combination of materialism, espoused by Büchner and Moleschott, and positivism, a philosophical legacy of Auguste Comte and his followers. Materialism and positivism shared a pure belief in science as the motive force of social and cultural

progress. Both viewed Darwinism as a generally successful effort to enhance the power of science in the unceasing war against mysticism, irrationalism, and supernaturalism.

Dmitrii Pisarev has been widely recognized as the most astute and influential architect of Russian nihilism. Materialism guided him in a consistent, but mainly implicit, war on the idealistic metaphysics of conservative writers, and on the most dedicated and bellicose defenders of autocratic values. A firm allegiance to positivism gave support to his views on the close ties between the growth of secular wisdom and social progress, on scientific regularities in the evolution of human society, and on the historical relativity of human knowledge and institutions. In addition to recounting the blessings of science as a major weapon in the war on the ancien régime, he popularized values that Francis Bacon had posited as the necessary cultural base for the advancement of science. He placed particular emphasis on two values closely related to the cultivation of scientific thought, one encouraging critical thought—the challenge to every intellectual authority—and the other stressing social utility as the only reliable indicator of the value of knowledge.

In 1864 Pisarev published "Progress in the World of Animals and Plants," a long essay presenting a fleeting analysis and enthusiastic endorsement of the basic ideas that made the Origin of Species a scientific work of epochal significance. The dramatic tone of this essay helped establish Pisarev as one of the most respected and influential popularizers of natural science during the early 1860s. The famous neurophysiologist Ivan Pavlov noted many years later that Pisarev's popular essay helped attract many young Russians to natural science studies in the institutions of higher education. Pavlov himself was one of those students.^[71]

No other nineteenth-century work, Pisarev thought, surpassed Darwin's classic as a contribution to the triumph of a world view based on secular wisdom. Nor did any work make a more formidable contribution to the scientific foundations of biology. Pisarev did not hesitate to equate the authority of Darwin's law of evolution with the authority of Newton's law of gravitation. Like the law of gravitation, Darwin's "law" is universal, intolerant of exceptions. Unlike the law of gravitation, however, it must consider individualized external conditions to which organisms or species react in their struggle for existence. In comparison with the law of gravitation, the law of evolution is far more complex and it had not been studied so thoroughly.^[72] More than any previous discovery, the law of evolution has shown that the work of nature is not a work of vast complexes of integrated phenomena but one of

accumulative effects of "millions of small forces and causes."^[73] Only persistent, trained, and minute observation can unveil the work of the universal struggle for existence. The inductive method is the most powerful weapon at the disposal of a naturalist.

The inductive method is one cornerstone of Darwin's theory, as Pisarev saw it. The other is historicism—the treatment of living nature as a continually changing phenomenon. Darwin showed that "not only individuals have their lives, but species and genera too; they gradually come into existence and they too are subject to continual variations according to definite laws."^[74] Just as Lyell made the history of the earth the central concern of geology, so Darwin made the history of living forms the central concern of biology.

Pisarev's essay was scarcely more than a detailed and painstaking summary of the Origin of Species; it stayed close not only to the basic principles of the evolutionary theory but also to the treasures of Darwin's minute dissections of supporting data drawn from natural history. In addition to the Origin, he relied heavily on Lyell's geological work and on Karl Vogt's popular Zoological Letters . In the writings of Étienne and Isidore Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire he found both the valuable ideas that contributed to Darwinian thought and erroneous allusions that worked in the opposite direction.

In a way, Pisarev's essay was intended to be a review of Rachinskii's Russian translation of the Origin of Species . Pisarev wanted to do something about two major deficiencies in the translation. In the first place, he thought that the translator's Russian was too academic to appeal to a general reader. In the second place, Rachinskii did not write an introduction to the Russian text. "Progress in the World of Animals and Plants" exemplified a kind of introduction Pisarev would have written: it recounts the basic components of Darwin's evolutionary argument in a language comprehensible and appealing to the lay public.

Like Darwin, Pisarev fully rejected the three basic components of Lamarck's theory: the direct influence of the environment on the transformation of living forms, the use and disuse of organs as a propelling force of evolution, and the innate drive for progress. Like Darwin and Lyell, he found Cuvier's catastrophe theory a futile effort to resolve a critical paleontological dilemma.^[75] The essay made only scanty references to the contributions of Darwin's precursors. Nor did it make a systematic effort to elaborate the intellectual links between the new theory of organic evolution and contemporary developments in sociology.

Pisarev found Darwin's theory acceptable in its entirety. He treated

the enemies of Darwin's way of thinking as his own enemies. His main intent was not to show how Darwin's theory could be made the pillar of a modern ideology, but simply to give a popular account of its basic arguments—and to create a model for popular reviews of developments in science, a type of prose which, he thought, should occupy the first place in the creative work of literary figures. The essay dealt extensively with three major problems: the universality of organic evolution, the mechanisms of evolution, and the geological, geographical, embryological, and comparative-anatomical evidence supporting the evolutionary idea as Darwin saw it. Pisarev's goal was to give a true recapitulation of Darwin's ideas, avoiding criticism and philosophical elaboration. The essay was written in a lively and limpid style, and the illustrative material, despite its magnitude, was closely tied to the theoretical issues at hand. Preoccupied with the details of Darwin's elaboration of evolutionary principles, he chose to ignore the work of Darwin's early supporters and critics. Curious readers learned about Fritz Müller's embryological support and Kolliker's general criticism from other sources.

Pisarev made sure to let his readers know about the immense proportions of the Darwinian revolution:

A master of vast stores of knowledge, Charles Darwin studied the entire life of nature from so broad a perspective and with so deep a penetration into all its scattered phenomena that he was able to make a discovery that, perhaps, has not been equalled in the history of the natural sciences. His feat was not limited to the discovery of an isolated fact, such as a gland or a vein, or the function of a nerve; he unveiled an entire order of laws, which govern the entire organization and transformation of life on our planet. Making his laws simple and incontrovertible, he built his study on obvious facts, and he made . . . the amateur in the natural sciences wonder why he did not come to these conclusions himself a long time ago. . . .

In nearly all the natural sciences Darwin's ideas have brought about a complete revolution: botany, zoology, anthropology, paleontology, comparative anatomy and physiology, and even experimental psychology, have accepted these discoveries as the guiding principle that promises to unify the numerous observations already made and to open new paths to fruitful discoveries. Darwin's ideas are so far-reaching that at the present time it is impossible to foresee and to enumerate all the consequences of their application to various branches of scientific inquiry. . . .

In [Darwin's] theory the reader will find the rigor of an exact science, the boundless sweep of philosophical generalization, and, finally, the superior and irreplaceable beauty that affects every manifestation of strong and healthy human thought. When the reader has become familiar with Darwin's ideas, even through my feeble and colorless sketch, 1 shall ask him whether we were right or wrong in rejecting metaphysics, ridiculing our poetry, and

expressing complete scorn for our conventional aesthetics. Darwin, Lyell, and thinkers like them are the philosophers, the poets, the aesthericians of our time.^[76]

These statements show clearly that Pisarev was eager not only to give a simple and accurate summary of Darwin's ideas as the most sublime triumph of the modern mind, but also to integrate Darwin's general views into the nihilist world outlook. He argued that science is its own best philosophy and that philosophy is worth its name only insofar as it is anchored in scientific fact and theory. Because he was a great scientist, Darwin was automatically a great philosopher—a masterful synthesizer of the superb achievements of the human intellect. By naming Darwin a great poet, Pisarev merely reaffirmed his strong conviction that the work in science is the most cogent expression of aesthetic quality.

Pisarev viewed Darwin not only as the founder of modern biology and a shining naturalist-philosopher, but also as a most successful expression of the guiding principles of the English intellectual tradition: inductionism, empiricism, skepticism, and utilitarianism. Pisarev's eloquent presentation of Darwin's ideas represented a notable addition to the rapidly swelling literature on English thinkers and philosophical tradition. The educated public was particularly fascinated by Russian translations of the major philosophical studies by or about Francis Bacon, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer, as well as by the scientific works of Lyell, Huxley, Tyndal, and Lubbock. For several decades, the neurophysiologist Ivan Pavlov could rely on his memory in citing verbatim long passages from Lewes's Physiology of Common Life, an assemblage of popular arguments in favor of making physiology the backbone of psychological studies. A typical member of the intelligentsia believed that these works expressed unbounded faith in philosophical realism, empirical science, the idea of the perfectibility of human society, and close interdependence of science and democracy. Kuno Fischer's freshly translated monograph on Francis Bacon made a major contribution to the triumph of "philosophical realism" in contemporary Russian thought. It emphasized the role of skepticism and critical thought in the accumulation of scientific knowledge; it provided strong arguments in favor of a full separation of philosophy and theology.^[77]

Advised by D. N. Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii and Vladimir Vernadskii, Emanuel Rádi, the noted German historian of biology, offered a pertinent description of the relations of Pisarev and the nihilists to Darwinism:

In Russia Darwinism became a part of the stream of positivism and materialism which began to flood the country in the middle of the nineteenth century. Before that time intellectual Russia was under Hegel's influence. A strong reaction against idealism now set in, and natural science was called in to help in its overthrow. . . . Pisarev held that such abstract subjects as philosophy and psychology merely represent empty scholasticism, and that natural science must be presented so simply that ten-year-old children and uneducated peasants can understand it. . . . The works of Darwin, Spencer, Haeckel, Wallace, and Romanes were translated, and helped to forward the movement.^[78]

Pisarev was the most dynamic and influential nihilist. Sometimes he was identified as the philosopher of nihilism. His contemporaries knew, however, that the major contributors to the Russian Word, particularly N. V. Sokolov, V. A. Zaitsev, and G. Blagosvetlov—in addition to Pisarev—represented a firmly united philosophical and ideological front backed up by the powerful sway of revolutionary zeal and moral commitment. All this, however, did not mean that the thinking of nihilists was always true to the norm. There were occasional digressions, often of sizable proportions.

One such digression came from Zaitsev. In 1864, in a review of de Quatrefages's book on the unity of mankind,^[79] he argued in a vein that identified him with the sociological-ideological movement subsequently named Social Darwinism. Contrary to the spirit of nihilism and to Pisarev's sharply focused philosophy, Zaitsev committed a gross indiscretion by making racist comments violating both the substance and the spirit of science. His Social Darwinist statements contradicted the scientific spirit and the equalitarian sentiment of nihilist philosophy. They made nihilism appear more reactionary than the most dedicated defenders of autocratic values.

Carrying Darwin's principle of the struggle for existence to what he considered a logical conclusion, Zaitsev asserted that all efforts to emancipate the black people from the colonial yoke and to give them an opportunity to rise on the scale of social and cultural progression were fated to be total failures. The black people, he wrote, belonged to a "lower race," which did not have the innate capability to benefit from the same rights as the members of the white race. In his view, wherever the white and black races belonged to the same political system, the black people should be relegated to a subordinate position. Zaitsev did not repeat his racist arguments. Nor was he particularly apologetic for having made them in the first place.

Only two popular journals—Sovremennik and Iskra —took the trouble to refute Zaitsev's reliance on Darwin's theory to justify a racist position.^[80] Writing in Sovremennik, M. A. Antonovich was particularly annoyed at the blinding rigidity that dominated Zaitsev's effort to apply the evolutionary theory beyond the scope of Darwin's concerns.^[81] Nozhin, a young embryologist and social critic, noted that Zaitsev went against Darwin's theory when he failed to view racial differences as transitory characteristics. Zaitsev was the first and the last Russian writer of note to flirt with Social Darwinism on a large scale.^[82]

The inappropriateness of biological models in the social sciences attracted the attention of Petr Tkachev, whose general orientation, despite its strong Jacobin and Blanquist elements, was close to nihilist thought. He wrote in the mid-1860s that the idea of "organic progress," highly fruitful in its application to the scientific study of both inorganic and organic nature, becomes "moribund and sterile" when it is transplanted to the scientific study of social phenomena.^[83] Tkachev thought that to study "organic progress" meant to rely on organismic analogies (in the Spencerian sense) and organic evolution (in the Darwinian sense). Opposed to the biological foundations of Darwinian sociology, Tkachev made no secret of his unlimited admiration for Darwin's contributions to biology and the scientific world outlook.

Institutional Variation

Russian scientific institutions did not express a uniform attitude toward Darwin's theory: while at one extreme there were institutions that completely ignored organic evolution as a scientific notion, at the other extreme were institutions that not only played a major role in the speedy diffusion of evolutionary ideas but also made Darwin's theory the point of departure in wide areas of scientific research.

With a membership consisting primarily of older scholars whose most productive and creative years belonged to the pre-Darwinian past, the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences did not produce at this time a single Darwinian scientist of consequence. Foreigners with distinguished records of scholarly achievement but of a decidedly conservative frame of mind dominated the biological sciences in the Academy. As guests of the Russian government, these scholars showed a strong inclination to avoid the great theoretical ideas of modern science which invited interpretations inimical to the sacred values of the autocratic ideology. Karl von Baer became the academic stalwart of anti-Darwinism: in his un-

yielding opposition to the new biological theory he relied on an idealistic interpretation of the ontological foundations of science and on a teleological view of the processes of nature. The academician G. P. Helmersen, a geologist of note, made no effort to hide his agreement with Karl von Baer's anti-Darwinian stance. F. J. Ruprecht, who held the chair of botany in the Academy and who was well known for his contributions to plant systematics, opposed "the materialistic orientation of modern natural science" because it had no place for a vital force in organic life.^[84] He did not actively campaign against Darwin, but he never renounced his vitalistic and teleological views expressed before the publication of the Origin .

The First Congress of Russian Naturalists and Physicians met in St. Petersburg from December 28, 1867, to January 4, 1868. Selected representatives of the major branches of natural science gave reports on their current research, adding up to a magnificent display of Russia's involvement in scientific research. In a paper on the sea cow, Johann Friedrich Brandt, a full member of the Academy since 1833, expressed his views on the current evolutionary controversy by rejecting both saltatory and gradual changes as natural mechanisms of the evolution of species. Every species, he contended, develops from a distinct embryo and follows a predetermined course of development. The boundaries separating species from one another are fixed and permanent. No change can lead to the emergence of new species.^[85] Von Baer's "teleology," rather than Cuvier's "catastrophism" or Darwin's "gradualism," was in his opinion the key to understanding the dynamics of living nature.

K. S. Veselovskii, permanent secretary of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, found it necessary to shed a more favorable light on the perspectives opened by Darwin's work. In this effort he was motivated by the need to explain the reasons for the election of Darwin as corresponding member of the Academy in 1867. In his annual report on the activities of the Academy in 1869, he referred directly to the contribution Darwin's theory had made to the widening of the research base of natural science. He noted the growing interest in the evolution of animal forms and emphasized the limitless promises of the recent removal of the boundaries separating botany and zoology from paleontology. "A comparison of presently existing forms of organic life with fossils buried in various strata of the earth—and belonging to various geological periods—will pave the way for the ultimate understanding of the general laws that have governed the transformation of life from its first appearance on earth to its present diversity and profusion."^[86] Despite this and

similar pronouncements, all the scientists Veselovskii had mentioned, with the exception of one, worked outside the Academy and were in their twenties. The special committee whose recommendation led to the election of Darwin as a corresponding member of the Academy, a purely honorific title, wrote that none of the works of the noted English scientist contained more errors than the Origin of Species .^[87]

The learned societies founded before 1860 and typified by the Russian Geographical Society met the new evolutionary ideas with pronounced detachment. These societies acted as closed corporations with a clear aristocratic bias in the election of new members. Some discriminated against younger scholars, as well as against persons who did not speak French or German. They were dedicated to the enrichment of descriptive natural history and had little use for natural philosophy—for scientific theory. The Moscow Society of Naturalists helped start the flow of Darwin's ideas to Russia: in the early 1860s its Herald of the Natural Sciences published several translated articles on the new theory. Very quickly, however, the controversial nature of Darwin's theory influenced the Society to withdraw from this kind of activity.

In 1864 a group of Moscow University professors, dissatisfied with, and openly critical of, the caste exclusiveness and scientific conservatism of the Moscow Society of Naturalists, which preferred to use French and German in scientific communications, founded a new scholarly association—the Society of the Friends of Natural Science, Anthropology, and Ethnography—dedicated to attracting private support for scientific research and to organizing systematic surveys of natural resources. The new society manifested a particular determination to keep abreast of most modern theoretical and methodological developments in science. It did not come as a surprise to its members when, in 1864, G. E. Shchurovskii, in his introductory report at the first meeting of the anthropological section of the new society, referred to anthropoid fossils and their significance for the understanding of the evolution of man.^[88] The new society became a model for naturalist groups organized in all national universities, including the newly founded Odessa University (1865) and Warsaw University (1869). The Proceedings of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists became particularly well known by its lively interest in keeping a record of the growth of evolutionary thought in Russia. Most of these societies, however, placed the primary emphasis on fieldwork in various pans of Russia and neighboring Asian countries, surveying natural riches and building an empirical base for a wide spectrum of natural sciences.

During the 1860s the universities became the major centers of scientific research, a position the Academy of Sciences had previously occupied. The university charter of 1863 recognized the rapidly growing popular interest in the natural sciences by allowing for a substantial expansion of the curriculum coverage of these fields. University education and research benefited from the rapid growth of laboratories, museums, and libraries, from the work of naturalist societies affiliated with individual institutions of higher education, from frequent visits of professors to Western universities, and from expanded postgraduate studies of young Russians in the leading German and French universities. While the Academy of Sciences and most older naturalist societies continued to be insulated from the social and ideological fermentation that swept the country after the Crimean War, the universities—to use the phrase of the eminent surgeon N. I. Pirogov—became the true barometers of social pressure generated by new turns in philosophical outlook and intellectual impulse.^[89] For all these reasons, it is small wonder that the universities became the centers of evolutionary research. Only a few years after the publication of the Origin of Species, Russian universities produced a number of scholars ready to make the notion of evolution the starting point of broadly based research and to lay the groundwork for diverse scientific traditions in Russian Darwiniana.

Moved and inspired by an intellectual atmosphere that emphasized the power and the challenge of science, most Darwinian pioneers belonged to the generation of young people who flooded the natural science departments of the leading universities. The emphasis was on the youth deeply involved in a war against the dominant ideas and habits of the past. I. I. Mechnikov was only eighteen when he submitted his essay on Darwin to Dostoevsky's journal Time . At the age of nineteen, K. A. Timiriazev published a long comment on the new theory, which led to the first Russian book on Darwin's contributions to biology. A. O. Kovalevskii launched his distinguished work on the embryology of marine invertebrates and published his first evolutionary paper in the Memoirs of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences when he was twenty-five years of age.

Russian Pioneers in Evolutionary Embryology:
A. O. Kovalevskii and I. I. Mechnikov

In the Origin of Species Darwin wrote that "various pans in the same individual, which are exactly alike during an early embryonic pe-

riod, become widely different and serve widely different purposes in the adult state." "So again," he concluded, "it has been shown that generally the embryos of the most distinct species belonging to the same class are closely similar, but become, when fully developed, widely dissimilar." To add weight to his statement, he cited von Baer's professed difficulty in telling apart the embryos of a long series of vertebrates during the early stage of development.^[90] Although Darwin did not make extensive use of embryological evidence in favor of evolution, he fully sensed its vital importance for the future development of transformist biology. The Origin of Species provided a powerful stimulus for reinvigorated and reformulated embryological research. In Russia the new embryology attracted a group of most promising young scientists, led by Aleksandr Onufrievich Kovalevskii and Il'ia Il'ich Mechnikov. These scientists wanted to answer one of the key evolutionary questions: Does von Baer's description of the vertebrate embryos apply also to the invertebrates? Does embryological evidence support the idea of a fundamental morphological similarity between vertebrates and invertebrates?

A. O. Kovalevskii helped to end the period of exclusive concern with the diffusion and popularization of Darwin's ideas and to open the period of original scientific research in the vast domain of evolutionary thought.^[91] A founder of evolutionary comparative embryology, he never doubted the fundamental correctness of Darwin's theory. Darwin approached embryology as a fountain of scientific information confirming the evolutionary point of view; Kovalevskii treated the evolutionary point of view as an interpretive and integrative principle of embryological research. Kovalevskii entered the annals of science as a thorough empiricist, who wrote careful and remarkably precise summaries of his personal research ventures without showing much inclination toward high-level abstractions and complex schemes of logical constructions. He made it abundantly clear, however, that his preoccupation with empirical minutiae did not lead him to lose sight of the challenging world opened by the evolutionary idea of the morphological unity of animal types: he dealt extensively and minutely with homologies and parallellisms in the embryonic growth of animals belonging to different taxonomic groups. Without stating it explicitly, he made a concentrated effort to build the empirical base for a general explanation of embryonic development—to erase the prevalent pre-Darwinian notion of a morphological chasm separating the vertebrates from the invertebrates.

I. I. Mechnikov made a revealing comparison between Kovalevskii and Ernst Haeckel, as opposite types of evolutionary biologists. Preoccupied with a search for universal laws of biogenetic consequence,

Haeckel showed a clear tendency to ignore products of empirical research which did not fit his grand theoretical schemes and to draw conclusions not warranted by available empirical data. He was not essentially a research scholar but an imaginative synthesizer of current ideas and an architect of grand hypotheses—basing much of his theory of gastraea on empirical data Kovalevskii had supplied. Kovalevskii, by contrast, believed that in more delicate areas of evolutionary research—such as embryology—extreme care should be exercised not to overlook a single empirical detail.^[92] The empirical basis of his embryological research, however, was sufficiently broad to allow him to draw conclusions of larger theoretical magnitude.^[93] By explaining the homologous features of invertebrate and vertebrate embryos he gave evolutionary embryology both a general theoretical orientation and a solid empirical interest.

Kovalevskii's first study—which brought him a magister's degree from St. Petersburg University in 1865—analyzed the growth of the lancelet (Amphioxus lanceolatus), a translucent marine animal. Impressed with the morphological simplicity of the lancelet, which at that time was classified as a vertebrate, Kovalevskii considered the possibility that this marine organism might represent a species occupying a transitional position between vertebrates and invertebrates. His hunch brought rich rewards. Painstaking inquiry showed that the embryonic development of the lancelet falls into two clearly distinguished phases. The initial phase follows the pattern of growth common to invertebrates: it is dominated by an even and nearly complete cleavage of the egg and by the emergence of the blastula, a hollow ball filled with a fluid and bounded by a single layer of cells. The second phase produces the embryo, consisting of an external and an internal germ layer, fully corresponding to the primary layers von Baer had described as a vertebrate characteristic. Kovalevskii's research showed that the lancelet should be classified as an invertebrate of the highest order, and that the embryonic growth of vertebrates and invertebrates is basically similar.^[94]

Kovalevskii then undertook to study the ascidians, immobile creatures fastened to the sea bottom, at that time classified by many as mollusks and by some as worms. By their external appearance, the ascidians do not show even a remote similarity to vertebrates. A closer study, however, provided Kovalevskii with stunning surprises. It showed that the development of the larvae of this organism displayed features characteristic for lancelets and lower vertebrates.^[95] In a later paper, Kovalevskii noted that in their embryonic growth the ascidians were closer to

the vertebrates than any other invertebrate group.^[96] His discovery made a great impression on his contemporaries, more so in the West than in Russia. In The Descent of Man Darwin took serious note of Kovalevskii's interpretation of the embryonic development of ascidians. He stated:

M. Kovalevskii has lately observed that the larvae of the Ascidians are related to the Vertebrata in their manner of development, in their relative position of the nervous system and in possessing a structure closely like the chorda dorsalis of vertebrate animals; and in this he has been since confirmed by Prof. Kupffer. M. Kovalevskii writes to me from Naples, that he has now carried these observations yet further; and should his results be well established, the whole will form a discovery of the greatest value. Thus, if we may rely on embryology, ever the safest guide in classification, it seems that we have at last gained a clue to the source whence the Vertebrata were derived. We should then be justified in believing that at an extremely remote period a group of animals existed, resembling in many respects the larvae of our present Ascidians, which diverged into two great branches—the one retrograding in development and producing the present class of Ascidians, the other rising to the crown and summit of the animal kingdom by giving birth to the Vertebrata.^[97]

A few years after Darwin commented on Kovalevskii's ascidian study, Haeckel incorporated the new discovery into popular literature on the evolutionary idea. He wrote in The Evolution of Man:

Toward the end of the year 1866, among the treatises of the St. Petersburg Academy, two works appeared by the Russian zoologist Kovalevskii, who . . . had occupied himself in studying the individual evolution of some of the lower animals. A fortunate accident had led Kovalevskii to study almost simultaneously the individual evolution of the lowest vertebrate, the Amphioxus, and that of an invertebrate, the direct relationship of which to the Amphioxus had not been even guessed, namely the ascidian. Greatly to the surprise of Darwin himself, and of all zoologists interested in that important subject, there appeared from the very commencement of their individual development, the greatest identity in the structure of the bodies of those two wholly different animals—between the lowest vertebrate, the Amphioxus, on the one hand, and that misshapen lump adhering to the bottom of the sea, the sea-squirt, or ascidian, on the other hand. . . . There can be no longer any doubt, especially since Kupffer and several other zoologists have confirmed and continued these investigations, that of all classes of invertebrates. . . , the ascidians are most nearly allied to the vertebrates. We cannot say the vertebrates are descended from the ascidians, but we may safely assert that . . . the ascidians are the nearest blood-relations to the primeval parent-form of vertebrates.^[98]

Kovalevskii returned several times to the study of lancelets and ascidians, but he also expanded his research interests to cover many additional species of invertebrates, represented mainly by the marine microfauna. In his subsequent studies he discovered the existence of mesoderm in annelids and insects, which provided an additional proof for the basic similarity in the embryonic growth of vertebrates and invertebrates. All these studies added essential information in support of embryonic homologies of vertebrates and widely represented invertebrates. The evolutionary basis of his theoretical orientation, the precision and remarkable skill of his research techniques, and the general significance of his findings assured Kovalevskii of a notable place in the mainstream of biological thought during the early Darwinian era. He not only helped strengthen the hold of Darwin's theory on modern scientific thought but also made a noted contribution to the accelerated growth of modern biology in Russia.

In a paper delivered at the Eleventh Congress of Russian Naturalists, held in St. Petersburg in 1903, V. V. Zalenskii, a distinguished member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, noted that the evolutionary theory provided "the main stimulus for the entire range of Kovalevskii's research." He noted: "Transcending the limits of pure theory, his research manifested a deep and clear awareness of the great importance of the study of animal evolution, the surest path to solving the basic questions of life that have preoccupied the human mind from time immemorial. An evolutionist by general orientation, Kovalevskii contributed more to the theory of the transformation of organic forms than any one of his contemporaries."^[99] In 1890 the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences honored Kovalevskii by electing him to full membership. A particularly important event in the history of the Academy, this election marked a major expression of faith in the rich promise of Darwin's theoretical legacy.

Kovalevskii received wide recognition for extending von Baer's theory of the development of vertebrate embryos to all animals: he demonstrated the presence of germ layers among both vertebrates and invertebrates. He showed that during the early phases of their embryonic development all multicellular animals have common features and that strong differences between various types of animals begin to appear only during the later phases of embryonic growth. This, however, was only part of his contribution to embryology. He not only replaced Cuvier's (and von Baer's) rigid division of the animal kingdom into four

types, each with its own separate and fully isolated biological identity, by a unitary system, but also broadened the empirical base of embryology with numerous new concrete facts. He offered, for example, a new empirical method in the study of the early phases in the development of germ layers.^[100]

The by-products of Kovalevskii's research were equally impressive: he discovered the presence of several marine species in the Red Sea, previously thought to exist only in the Mediterranean Sea. In a few cases, his information led to a reclassification of individual species. He added a veritable treasure of empirical facts and generalizations to the scientific knowledge on the formation of the body cavity, digestive canal, nervous system, and vascular network—the central problems of comparative embryology.^[101]

Despite rough beginnings, Kovalevskii's scientific career was a warm story of success and recognition. He was elected an honorary member of almost all Russian learned societies and universities and of a long series of foreign scientific institutions, including the Paris Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London. He received two prizes from the Paris Academy of Sciences. The Russian scientific community recognized the full significance of his scientific contributions and honored him profusely. In addition to the universal grandeur of his scholarly achievement, he made a special contribution to Russian science: by relying on a broad evolutionary framework and microscopic methods, he played a major role in transforming zoology from a narrow description of faunistic facts to a theoretically elevated science, dominated by experimental anatomy and experimental embryology. From a descriptive discipline of local interest, Russian zoology became a theoretical discipline with universal appeal. Thanks to a great extent to Kovalevskii's work, Russian zoology achieved impressive results in two activities: the study of phylogeny (based on the evolutionary principle), and the use of modern instruments of inductive research, surpassing the limits of simple observation. Comparative embryology and comparative anatomy became the scientific mainstay of Russian Darwinism.

Kovalevskii was not the only Russian scientist who helped lay the foundations for evolutionary embryology; the contributions of I. I. Mechnikov belonged to the same category of distinguished achievement.^[102] Mechnikov's name is usually associated with the phagocyte theory, built upon a study of intracellular digestion among invertebrates, which helped to explain the origin of multicellular animals and to lay

the foundation for evolutionary pathology. His work in the latter field earned him a Nobel prize, which he shared with the german pathologist Paul Ehrlich.

Mechnikov had much in common with Kovalevskii. Both were models of pure dedication to science, enormous intellectual resourcefulness, and vast reservoirs of energy. But there were also strong differences. Not without some exaggeration, S. Zalkind has pinpointed the differences in their temperaments and styles of work:

Although Mechnikov and Kovalevskii were personal friends and possessed common scientific interests, it would have been difficult to find two men more unlike in mental make-up, character, and methods of research. Mechnikov was a theorerician attracted to general scientific problems, given to making broad philosophical generalizations, impetuous and quick in his conclusions, sometimes apt to disregard facts but self-confident and persistent in the attainment of his aims. Kovalevskii, on the other hand, was an empiricist, tackling only concrete tasks, avoiding (we may even say, fearing) "all that lofty theoretical stuff," but at the same time extremely precise and thorough in his observations. A modest, mild and yielding man in everyday life, he was firm and indomitable in scientific disputes concerning facts which he knew well and had verified many times.^[103]

In 1863, as an eighteen-year-old student at Kharkov University, Mechnikov wrote an essay on the Origin of Species in which he scrutinized the pivotal ideas of Darwin's thesis, particularly the derivation of the struggle for existence from Malthus's law of mathematically formulated discrepancy in the growth rates of population and food resources. He also thought that the present existence of many lower organisms disproved Darwin's theory. If Darwin were right, he said, "these beings, the initial steps in the organization of life, would have begun to change a long time ago, giving place to more advanced forms." When pushed against the wall, Mechnikov argued, Darwin did not hesitate to rely on spontaneous generation to account for the emergence of species that could not be accounted for by evolutionary processes. All this, however, did not prevent him from concluding that the theory presented in the Origin was destined to have a great future and from considering himself one of its most ardent supporters. Mechnikov submitted his manuscript to F. M. Dostoevsky's journal Time, but the journal went out of existence before it could act on the new acquisition. The manuscript waited until 1950 to be published in a volume of Mechnikov's essays.^[104]

After intensive study under several leading German biologists and a passing interest in the embryology of insects, Mechnikov made the

Mediterranean marine invertebrates his main research concern. But, even in this activity, he resisted a dose adherence to the Darwinian theory: he clung steadfastly to his original idea that Darwin had advanced too many general ideas of a purely hypothetical nature. To Kovalevskii, Darwin's theory served as the incontestable basis of comparative embryology; to Mechnikov, it belonged to the realm of challenging hypotheses requiring careful experimental testing. Mechnikov did not hesitate to criticize the evolutionary conclusions Kovalevskii had reached in his studies of lancelets and ascidians as devoid of a solid empirical basis. He was particularly critical of Kovalevskii's claim to have established the unity of the embryonic growth of invertebrates and vertebrates. Nor did he approve of Kovalevskii's assertion that among lancelets the process of invagination leads to the formation of the digestive tract. He contributed articles to scholarly and popular journals in an obvious effort to discredit Kovalevskii's theses. His conclusions, however, showed that he had left the door open for a more conciliatory attitude toward the idea of the embryonic unity of the animal kingdom.^[105] The deeper he became immersed in embryological research, the more closely he became identified with the theoretical foundations of Darwin's legacy. During the 1870s his own empirical research led him to a full acceptance of Kovalevskii's position.^[106]

From 1865 to 1869 Mechnikov wrote about thirty papers on the embryonic growth of an unusually large number of animal species, mainly invertebrates. He helped confirm the discovery that all animals have two basic germ layers—ectoderm and endoderm—thus giving added strength to the idea of the evolutionary unity of the animal kingdom.^[107] His research concentrated on comparative embryological studies of animals whose morphological affinity had not yet been established. Some of his conclusions were not upheld by subsequent research; yet his evidence in favor of the general relationship of the Echinodermata, the Enteropneusta, and the Chordata had gone unchallenged.

At the beginning of his scholarly life, Mechnikov was not inclined to tie comparative embryology to Darwin's evolutionary theory. As late as 1869 he wrote: "The comparative history of [embryonic] development deals with facts from which it draws direct conclusions without considering the origin of various species."^[108] Soon after this pronouncement, Mechnikov, influenced by both Kovalevskii's research and his own, became an evolutionary embryologist in the full meaning of the term. Despite his persistent criticism of certain aspects of Darwin's theory, it would not be an exaggeration to say that after the early 1870s Mech-

nikov's entire scientific work and all his theories were part of a brilliant search for the deeper meanings of the scientific legacy of the English naturalist.^[109]

As he accepted Darwinism as a broad theoretical orientation, Mechnikov saw the basic source of its power in the combination of a historical view of nature, a comparative approach to biological phenomena, and an identification of purposiveness in the organic world with the processes of adaptation as a means of survival. If his work had weaknesses, they stemmed, not from a lack of scholarly dedication and experimental skill, but from the unique features of his temperament: unsettled and excitable, he moved too swiftly—particularly in his embryological work—from one research undertaking to another to do justice to all of them; his embryological research, for example, covered representatives of almost all major groups of invertebrates and some vertebrates.^[110]

In 1867 the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences awarded the first Karl von Baer Prize for outstanding work in biology. A special committee selected Mechnikov and Kovalevskii to be the first recipients of the coveted prize. The committee noted that the work of each scholar showed distinct excellence: Mechnikov was honored for having produced a "complete and integrated" study, Kovalevskii for the "diversity of subjects" covered.^[111] The committee noted with approval Kovalevskii's discovery of embryonic links between vertebrates and invertebrates.^[112] Leon Bliakher, a modern historian of nineteenth-century embryology, has argued that Mechnikov must also be counted among the discoverers of these links, soon to be recognized as the foundation of evolutionary embryology.^[113] Karl von Baer, the leading anti-Darwinian scholar of his age, served as the ranking member of the selection committee. Perhaps because Mechnikov showed signs of reluctance to link embryology with the Darwinian theory of evolution, von Baer praised his scholarship more than Kovalevskii's. Kovalevskii's full and consistent identification with Darwinism was well established from the very beginning.

The scientific work of Kovalevskii and Mechnikov represented the crowning point in the reception and early application of Darwin's ideas by Russian natural scientists. But how were these scientists regarded by the Russian scientific community? Although the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences published their papers, they had difficulty in finding suitable employment. At the time when St. Petersburg and Moscow provided the most coveted academic positions, Kovalevskii and Mechnikov had no choice but to seek teaching positions in provincial universities,

equipped with poor laboratories and libraries and wanting in intellectual stimulus for sustained scientific work. Mechnikov's candidacy for a position in the Medical and Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg proved futile. He served sixteen years on the faculty of the newly founded Odessa University, resigning in 1882 to avoid the grueling pressure of academic intrigue and student unrest. In 1887, before he had reached the peak of his scientific career, he left Russia to join the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where he remained until his death in 1916. A. O. Kovalevskii spent twenty-two years of his academic career in Kazan, Kiev, and Odessa universities fighting the depressing monotony of provincial isolation by extensive correspondence with western European embryologists, frequent scientific trips to the Mediterranean Sea, and cooperative research ventures with eminent foreign scientists.

Whatever the reason for the negative results of their initial search for academic employment in St. Petersburg and Moscow, the two young scholars were primarily responsible for the preeminent role of provincial universities in making Russia one of the early centers of empirical studies in organic evolution. It is most likely that the professional hardships of Kovalevskii and Mechnikov did not result solely—and perhaps not even primarily—from their identification with Darwin's theory. It should be remembered that the academic market—and the growth of employment opportunities—was controlled by the limited purse of the Ministry of Public Education much more than by the efforts of the scientific community to keep up with new developments in individual disciplines.

Among the new breed of evolutionary embryologists N. D. Nozhin occupied a unique position: he began as a searching scientist of great ambition and talent and ended as an ideologist dedicated primarily to emancipating his country from both the decaying feudal law and the burgeoning capitalist relations. After having studied chemistry under Robert Bunsen at Heidelberg University, he moved to Tubingen University, where he studied zoology under H. G. Bronn, the German translator of the Origin of Species, but not a Darwinist. In 1863 he went to Italy to conduct research on the embryonic growth of selected species of Mediterranean fauna for the purpose of answering the question of a possible morphological link between vertebrates and invertebrates. It was in Italy that he established close relations with A. O. Kovalevskii^[114] In his spare time he translated Fritz Müiller's Für Darwin into Russian; this work was generally acclaimed as the first successful effort to combine meticulous embryological research with Darwinian transformism.

The study, according to Mechnikov, marked the first scientific effort to base embryological research on Darwin's theoretical principles.^[115] The St. Petersburg Academy published Nozhin's lone scientific paper, a study of coelenterates (primarily medusae).

During his sojourn in Germany, Nozhin participated in several circles of Russian students eager to find ways of bringing modern political and social ideas to their native land. At this time Nozhin began to think of Darwin's theory as a source of ideas for a unitary picture of the evolution of the universe, both natural and social. He viewed Darwin's work as the culminating point of nineteenth-century science, and science as the only source of sound guideposts for purposive action in social development. Like the champions of nihilism, he preached "a visionary faith in science" as the true power of reason and declared that "all scientific knowledge in the hands of its honest servants stands in direct opposition to the existing order" and that "in the world there is only one evil—ignorance—and only one way to salvation—science."^[116] He argued that only by knowing the laws of nature could man widen the humanistic base of social existence. However, he rejected the struggle for existence as the moving force of evolution; he called it an aberration, a pathological force exercising a negative influence on both natural and social evolution. He called Darwin a "bourgeois-naturalist" for his emphasis on competition—rather than on cooperation—as the mainspring of biological and social development.^[117]

Nozhin supplied populist sociology—to which N. K. Mikhailovskii gave a fully crystallized form—with guiding ideas and logical structure. While Kovalevskii saw in Darwin's theory a fruitful method of scientific analysis, Nozhin saw in it the culminating point in the evolution of the modern scientific world view—a triumphant victory of reason over metaphysical mysticism and religious dogma. Nozhin must be counted among the first Russian scientists to express two thoughts that found strong followers during the subsequent decades: first, not the theory of the struggle for existence but the elimination of supernatural causality in the development of nature was Darwin's major contribution to science; and second, sociology owed a great debt to Darwin's theory—not to the notion of natural selection, but to the unitary developmental scheme and rational models for social analysis.

Among the Russian scientists who supported Darwin's ideas during the 1860s Sergei Usov, professor at Moscow University from 1868 to 1886, occupied a unique position. His translation of Friedrich Rolle's

Darwin's Theory of the Origin of Species, published in 1865, had the unique distinction of having been the first book in the Russian language to offer a comprehensive presentation of Darwin's theory. The author provided a detailed but simple explanation of Darwin's basic principles and made an effort to link the theory of organic evolution with the idea of progress. Usov's doctoral dissertation—Taxonomic Units and Groups (1867)—devoted a special chapter to the history of evolutionary theories in biology.^[118] The chapter gave a systematic and detailed analysis—the first in the Russian language—of Lamarck's evolutionary theory. In Russia, as in the West, the triumph of Darwin's theory opened the gates for the rediscovery of Lamarck. Usov scrutinized both the similarities and the differences between Lamarck and Darwin. The aim of his analysis was to provide a historical legitimation of Darwin's theory: to show that the new evolutionary idea was built upon the solid foundation of accumulated biological knowledge. Usov played a major role in making Moscow University a true bastion of Russian Darwinism. Although he regarded Darwin's theory as a triumph of modern biological thought, he did not hesitate to point out that some of its grand theoretical conclusions needed stronger empirical support.

Darwin's First Critics

Most contemporaries agreed that the Darwinian evolutionary theory found an enthusiastic reception in Russia and that negative criticism came from isolated quarters that could muster only scattered and feeble support. The triumph of positivism and materialism worked against anti-Darwinian criticism. Eastern Orthodox theology, entangled in spiritualism and ethicism, did not have alert and able spokesmen to fight the new heresy. Once the church recognized the danger, however, the theological journals began to carry anti-Darwinian articles, in most cases translations from Western religious journals. In 1864 the Creations of the Holy Fathers, a journal of the Moscow Theological Academy, published a long article, based on a paper carried by the English journal Athenaeum, that made no concession to Darwin's theory and pleaded for a crusade against it.^[119] A similar translation appeared in Christian Readings, a journal of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. These and similar articles marked not only the beginning of a sustained theological war on Darwinism but also the first step in the rapidly improving quality of church-supported criticism of scientific

theories that contradicted scriptural wisdom. In a way, this marked the beginning of the growth of a solid corps of theological writers concerned with the philosophical foundations of modern science.

I. Krasovskii was the first Russian theologian to offer an original, comprehensive, and systematic critique of the Origin of Species . He did not overlook the positive side of Darwin's theory, which, he said, made "a significant contribution to the natural sciences" by directing their attention to new areas of inquiry.^[120] Darwin showed that many species were actually different varieties of the same species, and he pointed the way to a more efficient "practical application of artificial selection." More than any other theory, Darwin contributed to the understanding of the dynamics of plant and animal modifications "within the limits of existing species." Krasovskii did recognize, however, that the notion of organic evolution was not a radically new development in science but rather the crowning point in the long history of a scientific idea.

Despite the praise, Krasovskii found it necessary to reject all the key postulates of Darwin's theory. He raised many basic questions that were to plague Darwinism for decades to come. Darwin made an unpardonable error, in Krasovskii's view, in limiting his discussion to the "secondary" causes of evolution. The "primary" causes, explained in the holy scriptures, had no place in Darwin's thinking. Darwin's "slight modifications," the source of evolution, eliminated divine interference from living nature. Teleology, as Darwin used it, was only "a play on words"; he recognized only natural causes and firmly rejected the existence of a higher intelligence. By emphasizing the struggle for existence as the motor of evolution, he denied the divine origin of the moral law of human society. Nowhere in his essay did the author try to make the criticism of Darwin's ideas part of a more general criticism of natural science. P. D. Iurkevich, the most eminent and erudite theologian of the 1860s, was too preoccupied with attacks on the materialistic ontology of contemporary experimental physiology to tackle the Darwinian menace.

Criticism of Darwin's theory soon found its way to the so-called thick journals, most with relatively large circulations. In October 1864 the journal Fatherland Notes carried, in Russian translation, an article by Albert Kolliker, originally published in the German journal Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Zoologie earlier in the same year. Kölliker admired the richness of empirical material Darwin had collected, but took serious exception to the basic principles of his theory.^[121] The ideas presented in this article quickly became a notable part of the general criti-

cism of Darwinism. During the next three decades, the critics of Darwin's theory showed particular interest in endorsing and elaborating upon the two main criticisms built into Kölliker's opposition to Darwin. First, Kölliker thought that Darwin exaggerated the evolutionary role of the adaptation of organisms to the environment and of natural selection. "The basic idea of my hypothesis," he said, "is as follows: I recognize that all members of the organic world owed their existence to a grand plan of development, which pushes lower forms in the direction of increasing perfection." He admitted, however, that he could not explain how this plan actually worked. Second, Kölliker rejected Darwin's notion of organic transformation as a slow process; instead, he suggested that new species emerged only as a result of leaps in the evolutionary process.^[122] He introduced the notion of heterogenesis. Kölliker went out of his way to remind his readers that his general theory of evolution did not assign man an exclusive position in relation to other animals. In his meditation about human origins, he pointed to gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans as animal species occupying the positions in the evolutionary scale that were nearest to that of man.

Karl von Baer, an eminent member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and the greatest embryologist of the pre-Darwinian era, belonged to the group of scientists who prepared the ground for the emergence of Darwin's evolutionary theory. His naturalist historicism had philosophical roots in epigenetic embryology, to which he had made contributions of lasting value. He could not help but recognize that some of his own most formidable contributions had gone into the making of the theory propounded in the Origin of Species .^[123] It was no surprise that in 1860 von Baer wrote to Huxley: "J'ai énoncé les mêemes idées sur la transformation des types ou origine d'espèces que M. Darwin."^[124] Von Baer noted, however, that his ideas on transformism were based on zoogeography. Nor was it a surprise that Darwin greeted von Baer's "approval" of his theory as "magnificent" news.^[125] Soon, however, Darwin learned that von Baer had changed his mind and had allied himself with the leaders of the anti-Darwinian movement.

Huxley and Darwin had good reason to expect von Baer's endorsement of the evolutionary idea. They should not have been surprised, however, that he wasted no time in allying himself with the forces of anti-Darwinism. His evolutionary thought underwent constant shifts in interpretation and emphasis. Sometimes it assumed very broad proportions; at other times it was drastically limited in both scope and meaning. In his scientific orientation von Baer did not escape heavy philo-

sophical considerations. In attacking Darwin's theory during the 1860s, he also attacked nihilist materialism and its war on traditional values. To make the situation even more complicated, von Baer wavered in his tireless search for a middle ground between the two extreme views of evolution. At one extreme was the notion of the universal development of nature, embodied in Schelling's Naturphilosophie, which cast evolution as a gradual expansion of the power of spirit over matter and favored Aristotelian teleology over Newtonian causality, at least in the interpretation of the organic world. At the other extreme were the new scientific ideas coming from embryology, paleontology, and several other natural sciences, which invited broad causal-mechanistic interpretations. A strong allegiance to the spirit of Naturphilosophie prevented von Baer from making these two orientations integral parts of a logically coherent and functional theory; moreover, after he became acquainted with the Origin of Species, his speeches and papers showed an increased reliance on the antimechanistic interpretation of evolution.

In his attacks on Darwin's theory, von Baer did not limit himself to the idea of transformism. He bitterly opposed the "materialistic" orientation of modern natural science, which received powerful support from Darwin's theory. In a paper read in 1861, on the occasion of the opening of the Entomological Society in St. Petersburg, von Baer lamented the current popularity of scientific materialism and argued that a science grounded in idealistic ontology would give a much more complete picture of the universe.^[126] The basic weakness of materialistic science, he argued, was that it did not—and could not—account for a "spiritual" element in the processes of nature. During the early 1860s, von Baer wavered in his views on organic evolution. For example, in his article "Anthropology," written for the Encyclopedic Dictionary, published in 1862, he viewed the brain of anthropoids as occupying an intermediate position between the cerebral cortex of man and that of the higher animals. The article echoed the spirit of transformism, allowing no room for creationist ideas.^[127] It made reference to "man and other animals." Since the essay made no allusions to Darwinian transformism, it was most probably written before von Baer had read the Origin of Species . In all his subsequent writings concerned with the problems of evolution directly or indirectly, he condemned Darwin's theory on both scientific and moral grounds. In von Baer's view, natural selection, Darwin's principal concept, did not have a basis in empirical data, ignored the role of heterogenesis (as formulated by Kölliker in 1864) in organic transformation, disregarded purposiveness in the processes of living nature, and

advanced the "unsupportable thesis" of the anthropoid origin of man. Von Baer found the latter component of Darwin's theory most irritating. Arousing his philosophical and ethical sensitivities, it compelled him to lecture against the new evolutionary idea.

In 1865–67 the journal Naturalist, devoted to the popularization of science, carried in numerous installments a Russian translation of von Baer's rambling essay "The Place of Man in Nature," directed mainly against Thomas Huxley's extension of Darwin's evolutionary theory to include man. Too cumbersome to appeal to the general reader, the translation contained many naive and sweeping statements inserted by the translator.^[128] In 1868 von Baer repeated the same arguments in a popular lecture at Dorpat University. At this time, however, his anti-Darwinian campaign had only begun to unfold. During the 1870s, particularly after the publication of The Descent of Man in 1871, his attack on Darwinism became both more comprehensive and more uncompromising.