NARROWNESS OF NATURALISTS, 347 
celebrated zoologists and botanists, among the opponents of 
the Theory of Descent; but these latter are mostly old 
stagers, who have grown grey in quite opposite views, and 
whom we cannot expect, in the evening of their lives, to 
submit to a reform in their conception of the universe, 
which has become to them a fixed idea. 
It is, moreover, expressly to be remarked, that not only 
a general insight into the whole domain of biological 
phenomena, but also a philosophical understanding of it, 
are the necessary preliminary conditions for becoming 
convinced of and adopting the Theory of Descent. Now 
we shall find that these indispensable preliminary con- 
ditions are, unfortunately, by no means fulfilled by the 
majority of naturalists of the present day. The immense 
amount of empirical facts with which the gigantic 
advances of modern natural science have recently made us 
acquainted has led to a prevailing inclination for the 
special study of single phenomena and of small and 
narrow domains. This causes the knowledge of other 
paths, and especially of Nature as a great comprehensive 
whole, to be in most cases completely neglected. Every one 
with sound eyes and a miscroscope, together with industry 
and patience for study, can in our day attain a certain 
degree of celebrity by microscopic “ discoveries,” without, 
however, deserving the name of a naturalist. This name is 
deserved only by him who not merely strives to know the 
individual phenomena, but who also seeks to discover their 
causal connection. Even in our own day, most paleontolo- 
gists examine and describe fossils without knowing the 
most important facts of embryology. Embryologists, on the 
other hand, follow the history of development of a particular 
