CHAPTER XIII 



THE RELATION OF LAMARCK AND DARWIN TO 



MORPHOLOGY. 



IT is a remarkable fact that morphology took but a very 

 little part in the formation of evolution-theory. When one 

 remembers what powerful arguments for evolution can be 

 drawn from such facts as the unity of plan and composition 

 and the law of parallelism, one is astonished to find that it 

 was not the morphologists at all who founded the theory of 

 evolution. 



It is true that the noticeable resemblances of animals to 

 one another, the possibility of arranging them in a system, 

 the vague perception of an all-pervading plan of structure, 

 did suggest to many minds the thought that systematic 

 affinities might be due to blood-relationship. Thus Leibniz 

 considered that the cat tribe might possibly be descended 

 from a common ancestor, 1 and another great philosopher, 

 Immanuel Kant, was led by his perception of the unity of 

 type to suggest as possible the derivation of the whole 

 organic realm from one parent form, or even ultimately from 

 inorganic matter. In the course of his masterly discussion 

 of mechanism and teleology, 2 he writes, " The agreement of 

 so many genera of animals in a certain common schema, 

 which appears to be fundamental not only in the structure 

 of their bones, but also in the disposition of their remaining 

 parts so that with an admirable simplicity of original outline, 

 a great variety of species has been produced by the shortening 

 of one member and the lengthening of another, the involution 

 of this part and the evolution of that allows a ray of 

 hope, however faint, to penetrate into our minds, that here 



1 Radl, loc. '/., i., p. 71. 2 Kritik der Urtheilskraft^ 1790. 



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