46 (JOKTIIE 



whose traces we come across everywhere" (Vicq d'Azyr, 

 quoted by Flourens, Mem, A cad. Sci., xxni., p. xxxvi.). 



Peter Camper (1722-1789), we are told by Goethe himself 

 in his Osteologie^ was convinced of the unity of plan holding 

 throughout Vertebrates; he compared in particular the brain 

 of fishes with the brain of man. 



The idea of the unity of plan had not yet become limited 

 and defined as a strictly scientific theory ; it was an idea com- 

 mon to philosophy, to ordinary thought, and to anatomical 

 science. We find it expressed by Herder (who perhaps got it 

 from Kant) in his Idcen zur Philosophie dcr Gcscliiclitc der 

 McuscJihcit (1784), and it is possible that Goethe became 

 impressed with the importance of the idea through his 

 conversations with Herder. Be that as it may, it is certain 

 that Goethe sought for the intermaxillaries in man only 

 because he was firmly convinced that the skeleton in all the 

 higher animals was built upon one common plan and that 

 accordingly bones such as the intermaxillaries, found well 

 developed in some animals, must also be found in man. The 

 idea was not drawn from the facts, but the facts were inter- 

 preted and even sought for in the light of the idea. " I 

 eagerly worked upon a general osteological scheme, and had 

 accordingly to assume that all the separate parts of the 

 structure, in detail as in the whole, must be discoverable in 

 all animals, because on this supposition is built the already 

 long begun science of comparative anatomy." 1 



The principle comes to clear expression in his J'.rstcr 

 r.nt-^'itrf cincr allgcuicinai I'.uilcitniig in die vcrglcicJictidc 

 . \nntomic (1795)." He writes : " On this account an attempt 

 is here made to arrive at an anatomical type, a general picture 

 in which the forms of all animals are contained in potentia, 

 and by means of which we can describe each animal in an 

 invariable order." His aim is to discover a general scheme 

 of the constant in organic parts, a scheme into which all 

 animals will fit equally well, and no animal better than the 

 rest. When we remember that the type to which anatomists 

 Ix-forc him had, consciously or unconsciously, referred all 



1 Cotta cd., vol. i.\-., p. 448. 



' First I) raft of a (k-ncral Introduction to Comparative Anatomy." 

 :i Cotta ed., i\., p. 



