53X THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



important than any phylogenetical speculation. The whole of this way of 

 thinking won but little acceptance in his own time, when research was being 

 directed along phylogenetical lines; in the eyes of posterity, on the other 

 hand. His stands out as precursor of the mechanical method of evolution, 

 which has since won so many adherents and which will be dealt with in 

 the following pages. 



His, however, was by no means alone, even in his own age, in his con- 

 ception of evolution. There were others who also opposed the one-sided phy- 

 logenetical line of research; among them may be mentioned Alexander 

 WiLHELM GoETTE (1840-19x1). He was born at St. Petersburg of Baltic ori- 

 gin, studied at Dorpat and at Gottingen, and finally became professor at 

 the German university in Strassburg, where he worked for the greater part 

 of his life. As an embryologist he was influenced from the beginning by his 

 fellow-countryman von Baer. In his principal work. Die Entwkkelungsge- 

 schichte der Unke, he seeks to make the evolution of Bombinator igneus the basis 

 of a. purely mechanical theory of evolution, freed from both Haeckel's " jorm- 

 bildende Krdffe" and Gegenbaur's phylogenetical constructions. Starting from 

 the old, but at the time commonly accepted, delusion that the nucleus of 

 the egg is dissolved before fertilization, he declares that the egg is an "un- 

 organized, inanimate mass," wherein are formed by purely mechanical forces 

 — osmotic currents and resultant pressure-changes — the first divisional fur- 

 rows, and together with them fresh nuclei as centres for the development 

 of the new cells. Thus is explained the origin of life out of lifeless substance. 

 Similar mechanical explanations are then invented for the formation of the 

 germinal courses and organs. In a later work Goette deals in the same method 

 with the stages of development in certain worm-forms. The interest attaching 

 to these investigations lies in the mechanical conception of the embryonic 

 development, which is not only maintained theoretically, but is also in 

 many respects successfully applied. Unfortunately, Goette was so delighted 

 with his theory that he let all criticism go by the board; his false concep- 

 tion of the nature of the egg he still maintained long after it had been proved 

 untenable; his detailed research was extremely arbitrary and was severely 

 criticized by Gegenbaur. His theory has nevertheless not been without its 

 effect; his disciple Roux especially, doubtless under his influence, formu- 

 lated a mechanistic conception of embryonic and organic development that 

 received widespread support. 



Another opponent of the universally current embryological conception 

 was NicoLAus Kleinenberg, born in i84x at Mittau, a disciple of Haeckel's, 

 and eventually professor at Palermo, where he died in 1897. Of his literary 

 production, which was small in extent but original in character, may be 

 mentioned his monographs on the evolution of the fresh-water polypus, in 

 which the ontogeny of this primitive animal is elucidated for the first time. 



