ON THE MORPHOLOGICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 267 



forms only accessible to the microscope. The metamor- 

 phosis of the different organs in the plant had been sug- 

 gested by Wolf, and more fully demonstrated by Goethe. 

 Unity of organisation had been proclaimed by Saint- 

 Hilaire and De Blainville, and the ultimate identity of 

 the elementary structure of animals and plants had been 

 demonstrated by Schleiden and Schwann. How was the 

 evident relationship of the different types of living beings 

 to be explained ? It is interesting to note how the very 

 terms which were then used implied the explanation, 

 though this was only apparent to one or two natural 

 philosophers who were then secretly at work. The 

 word " affinity," which in chemistry has for ages been 49. 



Affinity. 



used to denote, without explaining, the mystery of com- 

 binations and separations of different substances, had 

 been imported into philosophical anatomy to denote the 

 deeper structural likeness between animals which at the 

 first glance appeared to belong to different classes. This 

 word ordinarily implies blood-relationship, and might have 



patient, aud unbiassed inductive 

 research or, if there were a bias, 

 it was toward Cuvier swayed with 

 me in rejecting the principle of 



which they belonged, I was at 

 length led to recognise one cause 

 of extinction as being due to de- 

 feat ' in the contest which, as a 



direct or miraculous creation, and living organised whole, the indi- 



in recognising a ' natural law or vidual of each species had to 



secondary cause as operative in | maintain against the surrounding 



the production of species in orderly i agencies which might militate 



succession and progression ' (1849) " against its existence'" (p. 797). 



(p. 789). . . . " Each successive parcel 

 of geological truth has tended to 

 dissipate the belief in the un- 



Through this passage, quoted by 

 Owen from the preface (1866) of 

 the same work, a controversy arose, 



usually sudden and violent nature j it being takeu by a reviewer to 

 of the changes recognisable in the prove the admission of the Dar- 



earth's surface. In specially direct- 

 ing my attention to this moot 

 point, whilst engaged iu investiga- 

 tions of fossil remains, and in the 



reconstruction of the species to i of species. 



winian theory. There followed an 

 explanation by Owen, rejecting 

 natural selection and the admitted 

 contest as explanations of the origin 



