VON BAKU ON EVOLUTION 229 



contemporaries. This was probably due partly to the 

 obscurity and confusion of his thought, partly to his lack of 

 sympathy with the biological thought of his day, which was 

 preponderatingly morphological. 



It was not that men's minds were not ripe for evolution, 

 for in the early decades of the iQth century evolution was 

 in the air. There were few of von Baer's contemporaries 

 who had not read Lamarck ; l Erasmus Darwin's Zoonoinia 

 ran through three editions, and was translated into German, 

 French and Italian ; 2 German philosophy was full of the idea 

 of evolution. 



There was no unreadiness to accept the derivation of 

 present-day species from a primordial form if only some 

 solid evidence for such derivation were forthcoming. Cuvier 

 and von Baer, as we have seen, combated the current evolu- 

 tion theories on the ground that the evidence was insufficient, 

 but von Baer at least had no rooted objection to evolution. 

 In an essay of 1834, entitled The Most General Law of Nature 

 in all Development? von Baer expressed belief in a limited 

 amount of evolution. In this paper he did not admit that 

 all animals have developed from one parent form, and 

 he refused to believe that man has descended from an ape; 

 but, basing his supposition upon the facts of variability and 

 upon the evidence of palaeontology, he went so far as to 

 maintain that many species have evolved from parent stocks. 

 In the absence of conclusive proofs he did not commit him- 

 self to a belief in any extended or comprehensive process of 

 evolution. 



Imbued as he was with the idea of development von Baer 

 saw in evolution a process essentially of the same nature as 

 the development of the individual. Evolution, like develop- 

 ment, was due to a Bildungskraft or formative force. The 

 ultimate law of all becoming was that "the history of Nature 

 is nothing but the history of the ever-advancing victory of 

 spirit over matter" (p. 71). In a later essay (1835) in the 

 same volume he says that all natural science is nothing but a 

 long commentary on the single phrase Es werde ! (p. 86). 



As we shall see, von Baer adopted in later years the same 



1 K. E. von Baer, Reden, i., p. 37, Petrograd, 1864. 



2 Radl, loc. cit., i., p. 296. 3 Reprinted in his Reden^ i,, 1864. 



