Z90 THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



the vegetable kingdom are of course treated in accordance with Goethe's 

 theory of colour. Even the spiral vessels give rise to a number of speculations, 

 although Goethe's theory had not yet been published. The spiral theory was, 

 in fact, developed later by a large number of botanists who, like Nees von 

 Esenbeck, could be quite rational collectors and systematists, but who at 

 the same time gave play to a wild and reckless imagination on the subjects 

 of the spiral and polarity, till at last, in this sphere also, exact research 

 claimed its due. 



One of the last survivors of Germany's natural philosophers is worthy 

 of mention — Carl Gustav Carus (1789-1869). Born in Leipzig, he became 

 professor of comparative anatomy there in 181 1 and afterwards professor of 

 gynaecology and court physician at Dresden. As a doctor he was an eminent 

 specialist and, besides, a man of unusually varied interests; a personal friend 

 of Goethe's, he had a truly artistic nature and was himself a good painter 

 and writer on art, as well as a comparative anatomist and natural philoso- 

 pher. He experimented in comparative osteology, insect anatomy, and zo- 

 otomy. His comparative anatomy (of 182.8) stands to a certain extent on the 

 border-line between the contemporary and a more modern conception of that 

 science. Carus, for instance, no longer goes in for the plus and minus signs 

 with which his predecessors wasted their time without in the least solving 

 their problems; to him, indeed, nature is an expression of an idea, and life is a 

 flux, and the three-grouping recurs here and there; but he is at any rate able 

 to describe an organ or a system of organs without at once becoming in- 

 volved in sheer incomprehensibilities. He sets up an animal system arranged 

 in circles, one inside the other, with the protozoa outermost and man inner- 

 most, and with not very successful descriptions, but, on the other hand, he 

 gives a comparative account of the nervous system throughout the animal 

 kingdom that is arranged clearly and in an exact form throughout. In 1861, as 

 an old man, Carus summarized his ideas in a work entitled Nafur und Idee, 

 which certainly strikes a curious note, considering the advances that natural 

 science had already made by that time. Here we find ether regarded as the 

 primal substance and the essence of all chemical elements; after which we are 

 told that ''die Urbandlung des Athers ist Leben." The nervous system is the 

 central force in the animal kingdom, like the primal fire and the electrical 

 principle in the earth; the universe is an infinite sphere whose centre point is 

 everywhere and whose periphery is purely ideal. Again, animals arise out of 

 a sphere, the ovum, and develop through new spheres* being added to the 

 original; the senses are drawn in the corners of a pentagram inscribed in a 

 circle. When this work was published, Darwin's theory of selection had been 

 known for two years. Thus the last representative of natural philosophy in its 

 most extreme form survived up to modern times. 



The neo-romanticist natural philosophy was brought to Scandinavia 



