26 ANTICIPA TION AND INTERPRETA TION OF NA TURE. 



animals but not in man. Sylvius (1614-1672) 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 

 ^rst introduced for the opposed embryological 

 ciieory 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 



