33Q POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the eye of the Eternal Being, who sees all things in one connected 

 whole, it may be that the form of the ice-particle, as it is generated, 

 and that of the snowflake that is formed upon it, may have an 

 analogous resemblance to the formation of the embryo in the womb. 

 We can therefore accept it as a general law that, the nearer they 

 approach man, the more do all creatures resemble him in their essential 

 form ; and that Nature, amid the infinite variety which she loves, seems 

 to have fashioned all the living things upon our earth after a single 

 original model (Hauptplasma) of organization" (Bk. II., ch. 4).* 

 Herder had also learned from the comparative anatomists that it is a 

 corollary to this similarity of structure that organs which function 

 usefully in certain species appear also in other species where they have 

 little or no apparent use or function; in other words, he knew of the 

 existence of vestigial and rudimentary organs. "What Nature had 

 given to one animal as a merely accessory feature (Nebenwerk) she 

 has developed into an essential feature in another; she brings it intc 

 plain view, enlarges it, and makes the other organs — though still in 

 perfect harmony — subservient to it. Elsewhere again these subordinate 

 parts predominate ; and all organized beings appear as so many disjecti 

 membra poetce. He who would study them must study one in another; 

 where an organ appears neglected or concealed, let him turn to some 

 other creature in which Nature has perfected and plainly displayed it" 

 (loc. cit.). 



3. Herder had further learned from Buffon that, within the limits 

 of the specific type, a species may vary widely under differing climatic 

 influences. ' Those species that inhabit nearly all parts of the globe, 

 are differently formed in almost every climate/ etc. (Bk. II., ch. 3). 



4. The author of the 'Ideen' also recognized, and frequently dilated 

 upon, that fact in nature which later suggested the specifically Dar- 

 winian form of the theory of descent — the fact, namely, that nature 

 turns out more aspirants for life than she can provide with the means 

 of living, and that there results from this situation a universal struggle 

 for existence between species and between individuals. Herder had, 

 in fact, been profoundly impressed by the way in which the life- 

 processes of nature seem to be the expression merely of a blind, striving 

 Wille zum Leben (in the language of a later school), careless of the 

 single life, tending only to the production of the greatest possible 

 number of living beings, each of them competing with all the others. 

 The discovery of this impressive and sinister aspect of nature was, cer- 

 tainly, the main source, alike of the most important scientific hypothesis 



* This passage is given in part in ' From the Greeks to Darwin ' — being the 

 only citation from Herder there given; but the translation is singularly inac- 

 curate, and in one place makes Herder appear to say the opposite of his real 



