100 TIIK GERMAN TRANSCENDENTALISTS 



in their turn are modifications of the primary hollow 

 sphere. 



The German transcendentalists were more or less 

 contemporary with E. Geoffrey, and no doubt influenced him, 

 especially in his later years, as they certainly did his 

 follower Serres. Oken indeed wrote, in a note 1 appended 

 to Geoffrey's paper on the vertebral column of insects, that 

 " Mr Geoffrey [sic] is without a doubt the first to introduce in 

 France NaturphilosopJiic into comparative anatomy, that is 

 to say, that philosophy one of whose doctrines it is to seek 

 after the signification of organs in the scale of organised 

 beings." This is, however, an exaggeration, for Geoffrey was 

 primarily a morphologist, whereas the morphology of the 

 German transcendentalists was only a side-issue of their 

 NaturpJiilosopliie. 



Geoffrey, on his part, exercised some influence on the 

 transcendentalists. He asserts 2 indeed that Spix got some 

 of the ideas published in the Cephalogenesis (1815) from 

 attending his course of lectures in 1809. It is certainly the 

 case that Spix published before Geoffrey the view that the 

 opercular bones are homologous with the ear-ossicles, 

 adopting, however, a different homology for the separate 

 bones. 3 



Some speculations seem to have been common to both 

 schools for instance, the law of Meckcl-Serres, the vertebral 

 theory of the skull, and the recognition of serial homology 

 in the appendages of Arthropods (Savigny, Oken). Latreille 

 and Dugcs, as well as Serres, clearly show in their 

 theoretical views the influence of Oken and the other 

 transcendentalists. Geoffrey's principle of connections and 

 law of compensation were recognised by some at least of the 

 Germans. 



But whatever his actual historical relations may have 

 been with the German school, Geoffrey was vastly their 

 superior in the matter of pure morphology. He alone 

 brought to clear consciousness the principles on which a pure 

 morphology could be based : the Germans were transcen- 

 dental philosophers first, and morphologists after. 



1 Jsis, pp. 552-9, 1820 (2). - Mem. Mus. it Hist, na/., i.x., 1822 



:1 Cuvier and Valenciennes, Hist. nat. Poissons, i., p. 311, f.n. 



