BIOLOGY DURING THE FIRST HALF 

 OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 



CHAPTER I 



FROM NATURAL PHILOSOPHY TO MODERN BIOLOGY 



I. The Predecessors of Comparative Anatomy 



IN THE HISTORY of biology the nineteenth century will undoubtedly be al- 

 ways regarded as one of the most important epochs. With regard to the 

 value of the discoveries that were then made, that period can certainly 

 vie with the most brilliant of the periods that preceded it, and if we con- 

 sider the reputation which biology enjoyed in the world of culture of the 

 time, it was an unrivalled epoch. It is primarily the latter half of this cen- 

 tury, after the appearance of Darwin, that witnessed the greatest advance 

 that biology has ever been able to record, particularly in regard to the volume 

 of its discoveries. But this advance was being prepared for during the im- 

 mediately preceding decades in the splendid development that took place 

 in most branches of research — a development which in its turn was evolved 

 during the preceding eras out of events that have previously been recorded 

 in this work. Thus, in the biological science of the nineteenth century we 

 find elements derived from the exact scientific research that during the two 

 preceding centuries had sought for a mechanical explanation of the phenom- 

 ena in animate nature, but there were also features from the speculative 

 natural philosophy that endeavoured, by means of purely theoretical systems 

 of thought, to solve those problems of existence which exact scientific re- 

 search had found itself compelled to leave unexplained. As has already been 

 described in the last few chapters of the previous section, this natural phi- 

 losophy chiefly flourished in Germany and Scandinavia, but also existed in 

 England and France; it exercised a decisive influence upon the cultural de- 

 velopment of that period, and, as we shall see later on, far beyond it. During 

 the age when natural philosophy flourished, however, exact scientific re- 

 search was by no means dead; it only worked the better in peace, and, more- 

 over, there were of course scientists who, though convinced supporters of 



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