Goethe's theory of the skull. S^ 



variation, and combination of leaves there arise all the 

 varied beauties in form and colour which we admire in the 

 green parts, as well as in the organs of propagation, or the 

 flowers of plants. Goethe here showed that in order to 

 comprehend the whole of the phenomena, we must in the 

 first place compare them, and, secondly, search for a simple 

 type, a simple fundamental form, of which all other forms 

 are only infinite variations. 



Something similar to what he had here done for the meta- 

 morphosis of plants he then did for the Vertebrate 

 animals, in his celebrated vertebral theory of the skull. 

 Goethe was the first to show, independently of Oken, who 

 almost simultaneously arrived at the same thought, that the 

 skull of man and of all Vertebrate animals, in particular 

 mammals, is nothing more than a bony case, formed of 

 the same bones, — that is, vertebras, — out of which the spine 

 also is composed. The vertebrae of the skull are like those 

 of the spine, bony rings lying behind each other, but in the 

 skull are pecuHarly changed and specialized (differentiated). 

 Although this idea has been strongly modified by recent 

 discoveries, yet in Goethe's day it was one of the greatest 

 advances in comparative anatomy, and was not only one 

 of the first advances towards the understanding of the 

 structure of Vertebrate animals, but at the same time ex- 

 plained many individual phenomena. When two parts of a 

 body, such as the skull and spine, which appear at first 

 sight so different, were proved to be parts originally the 

 same, developed out of one and the same foundation, one of 

 the difficult problems of the philosophy of nature was 

 solved. Here again we meet the notion of a single type — 

 the conception of a single principle, which becomes in- 



