ON GOETHE'S SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHES. 31 



tinguished from all other animals by the absence of the 

 projecting snout, has, on the contrary, on each side only one 

 bone, the upper jaw-bone, containing all the teeth. This being 

 so, Goethe discovered in the human skull faint traces of the 

 sutures which in animals unite the upper and middle jaw-bones,, 

 and concluded from it that man had originally possessed an 

 intermaxillary bone, which had subsequently coalesced with the 

 upper jaw-bone. This obscure fact opened up to him a source 

 of the most intense interest in the field of osteology, generally 

 so much decried as the driest of studies. That details of 

 structure should be the same in man and in animals when the 

 parts continue to perform similar functions had involved 

 nothing extraordinary. In fact, Camper had already attempted, 

 on this principle, to trace similai'ities of structure even between 

 man and fishes. But the persistence of this similarity, at least 

 in a rudimentary form, even in a case when it evidently does 

 not correspond to any of the requirements of the complete 

 human structure, and consequently needs to be adapted to 

 them by the coalescence of two parts originally separate, was 

 what struck Goethe's far-seeing eye, and suggested to him a 

 far more comprehensive view than had hitherto been taken. 

 Further studies soon convinced him of the universality of his 

 newly discovered principle, so that in 1795 and 1796 he was 

 able to define more clearly the idea that had struck him in 1786 r 

 and to commit it to writing in his ' Sketch of a General Intro- 

 duction to Comparative Anatomy.' He there lays down with 

 the utmost confidence and precision that all differences in the- 

 structure of animals must be looked upon as variations of a 

 single primitive type, induced by the coalescence, the alteration, 

 the increase, the diminution, or even the complete removal of 

 single parts of the structm-e ; the very principle, in fact, which 

 has become the leading idea of comparative anatomy in its- 

 present stage. Nowhere has it been better or more clearly ex- 

 pressed than in Goethe's writings. Subsequent authorities have 

 made but few essential alterations in his theory. The most 

 important of these is, that we no longer undertake to construct 

 a common tyye for the whole animal kingdom, but are content 



