GOETHE AS A NATURALIST. S9 



abound in most excellent ideas. Some of them may indeed 

 be called the rudiments of the Theory of Descent. In 

 proof of this it is sufficient to adduce some of his most 

 remarkable propositions. He says : " This, then, is what wc 

 have gained, fearlessly to assert that the more perfect natural 

 organisms, such as Fishes, Amphibia, Birds, Mammals, and 

 Man at the head of the last, have been formed after one 

 primordial type, the very permanent parts of which only 

 vary a little one way or another, and which in the course 

 of reproduction is still being remoulded and perfected" 

 (1796). This " primordial type " of Vertebrates, after which 

 Man also has been shaped, answers to what we call " the 

 common ancestral form of the vertebrate tribe," and from 

 which all the various species of Vertebrates have arisen by 

 constant " development, variation, and reproduction." In 

 another passage Goethe says (1807) : "Plants and animals, 

 regarded in their most imperfect condition, are hardly dis- 

 tinguishable. This much, however, we may say, that from 

 a condition in which plant is hardly to be distinguished 

 from animal, creatures have appeared, gradually perfecting 

 themselves in two opposite directions, — the plant is finally 

 glorified into the tree, enduring and motionless, the animal 

 into the human being, of the highest mobility and free- 

 dom." 



That Goethe, in these and other utterances, did not 

 cspeak merely figuratively, that he grasped the internal 

 relation and connection of organic forms in a genealogical 

 sense, is yet more evident in remarkable separate passages in 

 vvhich he declares himself as to the causes of the external 

 multiplicity of species, on the one hand, and of the internal 

 unity of their structure on the other. He assumed that 



