ON THE MORPHOLOGICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 269 



Whewell, in various passages of his ' History ' and of his 

 ' Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences,' argues that the 

 explanation of organic forms is to be found in the study 

 of the functions which each organ is destined to perform, 

 and brings morphology back under the guidance of physi- 

 ology, from which De Candolle and others had only 

 recently liberated it. 1 Alexander Braun, the great German 

 botanist, wrote about the same tune : " Although the 

 organism in its growth is subject to physical conditions, 

 the real causes of its morphological and biological speci- 

 ality lie, nevertheless, not in these conditions : its laws 

 belong to a higher grade of development of reality, to a 

 sphere in which the capacity for spontaneous self-deter- 

 mination becomes evident." 2 Even Johannes Muller, 



mould it in subserviency to the 

 exigencies of the resulting specific 

 form" (p. 172). Huxley attributes 

 these theoretical views of Owen to 

 the influence of Lorenz Oken, the 

 principal scientific representative 

 of the school of the " Natur- 

 philosophie." In this respect Owen 

 left the direction of study initiated 

 and so successfully followed by 

 Cuvier. In fact, though opposed 

 to Darwinism, Owen did not, like 

 Cuvier, believe in special creation, 

 as is clearly shown in a passage 

 frequently quoted, taken from the 

 conclusion to the third volume of 

 Owen's great work ' On the An- 

 atomy of Vertebrates' (1868), p. 

 807 : " So, being unable to accept 

 the volitional hypothesis, or that 

 of impulse from within, or the 

 selective force exerted by outward 

 circumstances, I deem an innate 

 tendency to deviate from parental 

 type, operating through periods of 

 adequate duration, to be the most 

 probable nature, or way of opera- 

 tion, of the secondary law, whereby 



species have been derived one from 

 another." 



1 De Candolle is very clear on 

 this point ; he says (' Theorie 

 e"le"mentaire,' p. 170) : " L'usage des 

 organes est une consequence de leur 

 structure, et n'en est nullement la 

 cause, comme certains e"crivains irre'- 

 fle"chis semblent 1'indiquer ; 1'usage, 

 quelque soit son importance dans 

 1'^tude physiologique des etres, n'a 

 done en lui-meme qu'une mediocre 

 importance dans 1'anatomie, et ne 

 peut en avoir aucune dans la tax- 

 onomie ; quelquefois seulement on 

 peut s'en servir comme d'un indice 

 de certaines structures a nous en- 

 core inconnues ; ainsi lorsque je vois 

 la surface unie d'un pe"tale suinter 

 une liqueur, j'en conclus que cette 

 partie est glandulaire, et je 1'assimile 

 aux nectaires ; mais cette assimila- 

 tion, bien que reconnue par 1'iden- 

 titd de 1'usage, est reellement 

 4tablie sur 1'identifce presumed de 

 la structure." 



' 2 Quoted by Sachs ('Gesch. d. 

 Botanik,' p. 188). 



