THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 



pillar and butterfly serve as an example. "Imperfect 

 and evanescent a creature though the butterfly may be 

 as to its species, when compared to the mammal, in the 

 metamorphosis which it accomplishes before our eyes, it 

 nevertheless exhibits the superiority of a more perfect 

 over a less perfect animal. This consists in the deci- 

 siveness of its parts, the security that none can be put 

 or taken for the other; that each is destined for its 

 function, and remains constant to it for ever." Now, 

 however, in the most perfect creatures, the Vertebrata, 

 there appeared before Goethe's eye, a similar rudimentary 

 organ, metamorphosing itself within the individual ; this 

 was the vertebra. He followed it in its transformations 

 along the vertebral column. Impossible as it may be, 

 by placing together the first vertebra of the neck with 

 the last tail bone to infer their identity, it becomes 

 manifest in the gradual transition. 



But what lies in front of the first vertebra of the 

 neck? Is the cranium something absolutely different, 

 something new, not identical with the vertebral column ? 

 This was another perturbing thought which pursued 

 Goethe's every footstep. He pondered and compared ; 

 it could not be otherwise : the cranium must belong 



' O 



to the vertebral column, must be nothing more than a 

 part of the vertebral column. Through the vacillations 

 of his conceptions, he was, as he later expresses himself 

 on another occasion, "as an honest observer transported 

 into a sort of frenzy." Then, when in 1790 he picked 

 up a bleached sheep's skull in the Jewish cemetery at 

 Venice, " the derivation of the cranium from the verte- 

 bral bones was revealed to him." The more special 

 history of Comparative Anatomy has shown how ex- 



