MODERN BIOLOGY 359 



field; the musculature and digestive canal, the respiratory and circulatory- 

 systems, are also carefully described. This radical detailed knowledge of 

 Meckel's has had a considerable influence on the development of biological 

 science. Moreover, his general conception of the phenomena of life has like- 

 wise made a deep impression. His theory of evolution deserves to be men- 

 tioned by the side of Lamarck's; he is at all events worthy to be named by the 

 many who at the zenith of Darwinism sought for "pre-Darwinists," instead 

 of Goethe, who never discussed the problem of species. He undoubtedly had a 

 great influence also on biological research in Germany during the succeeding 

 era; the very word "BiUungsgeserz" sounds quite familiar to anyone who has 

 studied Haeckel's works for instance, in which the word '"law" occurs so 

 often in passages where "hypothesis" or "theory" should have been written 

 instead. Nor can there be any doubt that his penchant for bold comparisons 

 and derivations has not been without its influence on the modern school, 

 which has made the derivation of the organs of the higher animals from 

 corresponding less developed forms the chief aim of biology. This morpho- 

 genetical school has largely applied Meckel's ideas, although employing an 

 entirely different standard of criticism, so that Meckel, who so essentially 

 belongs to romantic natural philosophy, stands as an intermediary between 

 this school of research and that which included a man like Gegenbaur 

 amongst its notable members. 



Comparative anatomy in France 

 While thus the exact biological method in Germany only gradually suc- 

 ceeded in getting rid of its connexion with natural philosophy, the same 

 method in France had no difficulty in triumphing over the more speculative 

 method of natural research represented by Lamarck and Geoff'roy; it was 

 Cuvier and Bichat who with their pioneer work determined the direction in 

 which the scientists of the next generation were to follow with fair una- 

 nimity. Thanks, then, to these precursors, France acquired before other Euro- 

 pean countries a science of life-phenomena free from the romantic infusions 

 of speculative philosophy, but, on the other hand, this science eventually 

 became extremely conservative, and when the theory of the origin of species 

 appeared, French research repudiated it with greater vehemence than any 

 other. Of these French biologists from the beginning of the century some 

 practised a purely experimental method; these will be dealt with below. As 

 a direct pupil of Cuvier and Bichat, however, Blainville is worthy of mention, 

 for he furthered the cause of comparative anatomy long and successfully. 



Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville was born in 1777 at Arques, in 

 Normandy, of noble family. He was brought up at a monastic school, and 

 when it was closed down during the Revolution, he went to Paris, where he 

 first of all applied himself to painting, apparently with but little enthusiasm 

 or success. A mere chance — a lecture by Cuvier that he happened to go to 



