38 THE EVOLUTION OF MAN. 



maintained that the egg was the real animal germ, and 

 that the seminal animalcules, at the time of fecundation, 

 only gave the impulse which caused the unfolding of the 

 egg in which all generations were encased one in the other. 

 This opinion prevailed with the majority of biologists 

 during the whole of the last century, though Wolff, in 

 1759, demonstrated its utter want of foundation. Its 

 acceptance was specially due to the fact that the most 

 celebrated biological and philosophical authorities of that 

 time had pronounced in its favour, — among them princi- 

 pally Haller, Bonnet, and Leibnitz. 



Albrecht Haller, Professor at Gottingen, who has often 

 been called " the Father of Physiology," was a very learned 

 and comprehensively educated man, but, as an interpreter 

 of the more profound natural phenomena, occupied no 

 very high position. He has best described himself in the 

 celebrated and often-cited saying, that " Into the inner side 

 of Nature no created mind ever penetrates ; happy he to 

 whom she shows only her outer husk !" The best answer 

 to this " husk " view of nature was given by Goethe, in his 

 splendid poem which ends with the lines : 



" Nor husk nor kernel Nature brings — 

 For all one only type of things ; 

 Yet prove thyself, and seek to know 

 If husk or kernel thou dost show." 



Attempts have, however, been recently made to justify 

 Haller's " husk " view. Wilhelm His has made himself the 

 special defender of this strange conception. Haller, in his 

 well-known work, Elementa Physiologice, adopted the Theory 

 of Evolution (Theory of Pre-formation) in a most decided 

 manner, in these words : " There is no coming into being I 



