148 Darwin as an Anthropologist 



The fimdamental importance of this comparative morphology of 

 the Maimiials, as a sound basis of scientific anthropology, was re- 

 cognised just before the beginning of the nineteenth century, when 

 Lamarck first emphasised (1794) the division of the animal kingdom 

 into Vertebrates and Invertebrates. Even thirteen years earlier 

 (1781), when Goethe made a close study of the mammal skeleton 

 in the Anatomical Institute at Jena, he was intensely interested to 

 find that the composition of the skull was the same in man as in the 

 other mammals. His discovery of the os intermaxillare in man ( 1 784), 

 which was contradicted by most of the anatomists of the time, and 

 his ingenious " vertebral theory of the skull," were the splendid fruit 

 of his morphological studies. They remind us how Germany's greatest 

 philosopher and poet was for many years ardently absorbed in the 

 comparative anatomy of man and the mammals, and how he divined 

 that their wonderful identity in structure was no mere superficial 

 resemblance, but pointed to a deep internal connection. In my 

 Generelle Morphologie (18G6), in which I published the first attempts 

 to construct phylogenetic trees, I have given a number of remarkable 

 theses of Goethe, which may be called "phyletic prophecies." They 

 justify us in regarding him as a precursor of Darwin. 



In the ensuing forty years I have made many conscientious efibrts 

 to penetrate further along that line of anthropological research that 

 was opened up by Goethe, Lamarck, and Darwin. I have brought 

 together the many valuable results that have constantly been reached 

 in comparative anatomy, physiology, ontogeny, and palaeontology, and 

 maintained the effort to reform the classification of animals and 

 plants in an evolutionary sense. The first rough drafts of pedigrees 

 that were published in the Generelle Morphologie have been improved 

 time after time in the ten editions of my Naturliche Schopfungs- 

 geschichte ( 1 868 — 1 902) \ A sounder basis for my phyletic hypotheses, 

 derived from a discriminating combination of the three great records — 

 morphology, ontogeny, and palaeontology — was provided in the three 

 volumes of my St/stematische Phylogenie^ (1894 Protists and Plants, 

 1895 Vertebrates, 1896 Invertebrates). In my Anthropogenie^ I 

 endeavoured to employ all the kno^vn facts of comparative ontogeny 

 (embryology) for the purpose of completing my scheme of human 

 phylogeny (evolution). I attempted to sketch the historical develop- 

 ment of each organ of the body, beginning with the most elemen- 

 tary structures in the germ-layers of the Gastraea. At the same time 

 I drew up a corrected statement of the most important steps in the 

 line of our ancestral series. 



1 Eng. transl. ; The History of Creation, London, 1876. ^ Berlin, 1894—96. 



* Leipzig, 1874, 5th edit. 1905. Eng. tranel. ; The Evolution of Man, London, 

 1905. 



