ON THE MORPHOLOGICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 251 



this first morphological fragment he had already led 

 by analogy discovered the intermaxillary bone in the 

 upper human jaw. Later he and Oken independently 

 traced the analogy between the skull and the vertebral 

 column in vertebrate animals, a view which was taken 

 up by eminent anatomists, such as Meckel, Spix, and 

 Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. 1 The tendency which lay in these 

 attempts, of which the metamorphosis of plants and the 

 vertebral theory of the skull are only prominent examples, 

 is one which was naturally provoked by the opposite 

 tendency which anatomical studies had received through 

 Linnaeus and Cuvier. Goethe himself gives a clear ex- 

 planation of its origin. In a remarkable passage in the 

 history 2 of his botanical studies, he mentions Shake- 

 speare, Spinoza, and Linnaeus as the three masters who 

 had led him to reflect on the great problems of art, of life, 

 and of nature. Now, he says, the influence of Linnaeus 

 lay principally in the opposition which he provoked. 



1 A good account of the part 

 which the vertebral theory of the 

 skull played in comparative an- 

 atomy will be found in WheweU's 

 History, vol. iii. p. 369, &c. But 

 see against this Huxley in ' Life of 

 Owen ' (vol. ii. p. 304) : " The hypo- 

 thesis that the skull consists of 

 modified vertebrae, advocated by 

 Goethe and Oken, and the subject 

 of many elaborate works, was so 

 little reconcilable with the mode of 

 its development that, as early as 

 1842, Vogt threw well - founded 

 doubts upon it. ' All efforts to in- 

 terpret the skull in this way,' said 

 he, 'are vain.'" 



2 See the Weimar edition of his 

 Scientific Works, vol. ii. The 

 passage given in the text is from 

 an earlier account contained in two 

 numbers of the ' Morphologische 



Hefte' (1817), reprinted loc. cit., p. 

 389, &c. How Goethe continually 

 hovered between the theory of 

 types and that of development is 

 seen in the following passage (1831, 

 W. W., vol. vi. p. 120): "Das 

 Wechselhafte der Pflanzengestal- 

 ten, dem ich langst auf seinem 

 eigenthumlichen Gange gefolgt, 

 erweckte nun bei mir immermehr 

 die , Vorstellung : die uns umge- 

 benden Pflanzenformen seien nicht 

 urspriinglich determinirt und fest- 

 gestellt, ihnen sei viehmehr, bei 

 einer eigensinnigen, generischen 

 und specifischen Hartnackigkeit, 

 eine gliickliche Mobilitat und 

 Biegsamkeit verliehen, um in so 

 viele Bedingungen, die iiber dem 

 Erdkreis auf sie einwirken, sich 

 zu fiigen und darnach bilden und 

 umbilden zu konnen." 



