THE THEORY OF THE VERTEBRATE SKULL. 281 



idea with his a priori conception of the nature of the head, the 

 chance of appropriating it seems to have overcome the moral 

 sense — the least developed element in the spiritual nature — of 

 Goethe, unless the poet deceived himself." * 



" The circumstances under which the poet, in 1820, narrates 

 having become inspired with the original idea are suspiciously 

 analogous to those described by Oken in 1807, as producing 

 the same effect on his mind."t 



It would be difficult to couch an offensive accusation in 

 stronger phraseology than this ; but, by a singular chance, the 

 scientific morality of its object has recently been fully vin- 

 dicated. Goethe, when in Italy, kept up a correspondence 

 with the family of his friend Herder. His letters have been 

 published, and in one addressed to Madame Herder, and dated 

 May 4, 1790, this passage occurs : — 



" By the oddest, happy chance, my servant picked up a bit 

 of an animal's skull in the Jews' Cemetery at Venice, and, by 

 way of a joke, held it out to me as if he were offering me a 

 Jew's skull. I have made a great step in the explanation of 

 the formation of animals." 



Can it be doubted that this " great step " is exactly that 

 vertebral theory of which Goethe says, writing in 1820, he had 

 as clear a view " thirty years ago ?" It is to be hoped that 

 this evidence, which Professor Virchow has so strikingly put 

 forward, will henceforward silence even the most virulent of 

 Goethe's detractors, although a careful perusal of the arguments 

 used by Mr. Lewes, in his " Life of Goethe," might have already 

 sufficed those who were open to conviction. 



The idea, which dropped still-born from Goethe's mind, 

 was, as I have said, conceived afresh by Oken, and came 

 vigorously into the w T orld in that remarkable discourse (occupy- 

 ing in print about fourteen quarto pages) with which he 

 inaugurated his professorial labours at Jena. 



It is hard to form a just judgment of this singular man ; and, 

 I must confess, I never read his works without thinking of the 



* •• Encyclopaedia Britaimica," eighth edition, vol. xvi., p. 501 ; article, 

 "Oken." t Ibid., p. 501. 



