GOETHE, 119 



earnestness and persevering zeal, and is not totally 

 deficient in intuitive tact, cultivated by exercise, far 

 from being perplexed by them, will assuredly, amidst 

 all their varieties of form, very soon detect the true 

 species and their characters. But if indeed, in any one 

 genus rich in forms, no limit to which nature herself 

 adheres should be discovered, what should hinder us 

 from treating it as a single species, and all its forms 

 as so many varieties ? As long as the evidence is 

 wanting, which it is not likely will ever be produced, 

 that no species whatever exists in nature, but that every, 

 even the remotest form, may be evolved from the other 

 by intermediate links, till then we must be allowed to 

 rely upon the course already indicated. Let the master 

 now instruct the scholar, or, according to ancient custom, 

 support him." And he does support him, for in his 

 morphological writings he adopts his pupil's enuncia- 

 tions on the problem as a testimony of entire commu- 

 nity of mind and soul. 



There can be no question that Goethe's thoughts on 

 organic nature were more profound than those of his 

 contemporaries. But we must not forget that the cardi- 

 nal idea of a modifiable archetype prevailed among 

 eminent men both before and with Goethe, as I have 

 shown in my little work known to the profession, " The 

 Development of Comparative Anatomy " (Die Entwick- 

 elung der vergieichenden Anatomic, 1855). If in his 

 popular lectures, Peter Camper amused his audience by 

 a diagram in which he evolved a beautiful female figure 

 from a horse ; if he says that he is so entirely absorbed 

 in studying the whale and comparing it with the human 

 structure that every girl, pretty or ugly, appeared to him 



