26 ANTICIPA TION AND INTER PR E TA TION OF NA TURE, 



animals but not in man. Sylvius (16141672) de- 

 fended Galen warmly, and argued that the fact that 

 man had no intermaxillary bone at present was no 

 proof that he did not have it in Galen's time. " It 

 is luxury," he said, "it is sensuality which has 

 gradually deprived man of this bone." This pas- 

 sage proves that the idea of degeneration of struct- 

 ure through disuse, as well as the idea of the 

 inheritance of the effects of habit, or the ' transmis- 

 sion of acquired characters,' is a very ancient one. 



Development, or increasing perfection of struct- 

 ure in course of Evolution, was the central thought 

 of Aristotle's natural philosophy, but the term it- 

 self, as applied to the gradual increase in organs 

 and single structures in the evolutionary sense, was 

 first clearly used by Lamarck. 



Embryological development was rightly conceived 

 a priori by Aristotle in the form of Epigenesis, for 

 he regarded the embryo as a mass of particles con- 

 taining the potential capacity of development into 

 the form of the adult. The term ' Evolution ' was 

 first introduced for the opposed embryological 

 theory that the embryo contained the complete 

 form in miniature, and that development consisted 

 merely in the enlargement of this miniature. This 

 doctrine of ' emboitement ' of Bonnet, defended by 

 Swammerdam, Haller, Reaumur, and Cuvier, like 

 the doctrine of Abiogenesis, long stood in the way 

 of the progress of the Evolution idea; for if it 

 were true that all beings had been preformed from 



