92 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



theory that all " the more perfect organic natures," that is 

 all Vertebrate animals, are descended from one common 

 prototype, that they have arisen from it by propagation 

 (Inheritance) and transformation (Adaptation), may be 

 distinctly inferred. But it is especially interesting to 

 observe that Goethe admits no exceptional position for man, 

 but rather expressly includes him in the tribe of the other 

 Vertebrate animals. The most important special inference 

 of the Doctrine of Filiation, that man is descended from 

 other Vertebrate animals, may here be recognized in the 

 germ.^ 



This exceedingly important ftmdamental idea is expressed 

 by Goethe still more clearly in another passage (1807), in 

 the following words : — " If we consider plants and animals in 

 their most imperfect condition, they can scarcely be distin- 

 guished. But this much we can say, that the creatures 

 which by degrees emerge as plants and animals out of a 

 common phase, where they are barely distinguishable, anive 

 at perfection in two opposite directions ; so that the plant in 

 the end reaches its highest glory in the tree, which is 

 immovable and stiff, the animal in man, who possesses 

 the greatest elasticity and freedom." This remarkable 

 passage not only indicates most explicitly the genealogical 

 relationship between the vegetable and animal kingdoms, 

 but contains the germ of the monophyletic hypothesis of 

 descent, the importance of which I shall have to explain 

 hereafter. (Compare Chapter XVI. and the Pedigree, 

 p. 898.) 



At the time when Goethe in this way sketched the 

 fundamental features of the Theory of Descent, another 

 German philosopher, Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus, of 



