72 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT ACCORDING TO GOETHE 



AND 0IO]N. 



Scientific Insufficiency of all Conceptions of a Creation of Individnal Species 

 — Necessity of the Counter Theories of Development. — Historical 

 Survey of the Most Important Theories of Development. — Aristotle. — 

 His Doctrine of Spontaneous Generation. — The Meaning of Natural 

 Philosophy. — Goethe. — His Merits as a Naturalist. — His Metamorphosis 

 of Plants. — His Yertebral Theory of the Skull. — His Discovery of the 

 Mid Jawbone in Man. — Goethe's Interest in the Dispute between 

 Cuvier and Geoffrey St. Hilaire. — Goethe's Discovery of the Two Organic 

 Formative Principles, of the Conservative Principle of Specification (by 

 Inheritance), and of the Progressive Principle of Transformation (by 

 Adaptation). — Goethe's Yiews of the Common Descent of aU Yertebrate 

 Animals, including Man. — Theory of Development according to Gottfried 

 Reinhold Treviranus. — His Monistic Conception of Nature. — Oken. — His 

 Natural Philosophy, — Oken's Theory of Protoplasm. — Oken's Theory 

 of Infusoria (Cell Theory). — Oken's Theory of Development. 



All tlie different ideas which we may form of a separate 

 and independent origin of the individual organic species 

 by creation lead us, when logically carried out, to a so- 

 called anthropomorphism, that is, to imagining the Creator 

 as a man-like being, as was shown in our last chapter. 

 The Creator becomes an organism who designs a plan, 

 reflects upon and varies this plan, and finally forms 

 creatiu-es according to this plan, as a human architect 

 would his building. If even such eminent natm^alists as 



