138 Darwin as an Anthropologist 



stricter sense. The illuminating truth of these cumulative arguments 

 was so great in every branch of biology that, in spite of the most 

 vehement opposition, the battle was won within a single decade, and 

 Darwin secured the general admiration and recognition that had 

 been denied to his forerunner, Lamarck, up to the hour of his death 

 (1829). 



Before, however, we consider the momentous influence that 

 Darwinism has had in anthropology, we shall find it useful to glance 

 at its history in the course of the last half century, and notice the 

 various theories that have contributed to its advance. The first 

 attempt to give extensive expression to the reform of biology by 

 Darwin's work will be found in my Generelle Morphologie (1866) 1 

 which was followed by a more popular treatment of the subject in 

 my Natilrliche Schop/ungsgeschiehte (1868) 2 , a compilation from the 

 earlier work. In the first volume of the Generelle Morphologie 

 I endeavoured to show the great importance of evolution in settling 

 the fundamental questions of biological philosophy, especially in 

 regard to comparative anatomy. In the second volume I dealt 

 broadly with the principle of evolution, distinguishing ontogeny and 

 phylogeny as its two coordinate main branches, and associating the 

 two in the Biogenetic Law. The Law may be formulated thus: 

 "Ontogeny (embryology or the development of the individual) is 

 a concise and compressed recapitulation of phylogeny (the palae- 

 ontological or genealogical series) conditioned by laws of heredity 

 and adaptation." The "Systematic introduction to general evo- 

 lution," with which the second volume of the Generelle Morpho- 

 logie opens, was the first attempt to draw up a natural system of 

 organisms (in harmony with the principles of Lamarck and Darwin) 

 in the form of a hypothetical pedigree, and was provisionally set 

 forth in eight genealogical tables. 



In the nineteenth chapter of the Generelle Morphologie — a part 

 of which has been republished, without any alteration, after a lapse 

 of forty years — I made a critical study of Lamarck's theory of descent 

 and of Darwin's theory of selection, and endeavoured to bring the 

 complex phenomena of heredity and adaptation under definite laws 

 for the first time. Heredity I divided into conservative and pro- 

 gressive : adaptation into indirect (or potential) and direct (or actual). 

 I then found it possible to give some explanation of the correlation of 

 the two physiological functions in the struggle for life (selection), and 

 to indicate the important laws of divergence (or differentiation) 

 and complexity (or division of labour), which are the direct and 

 inevitable outcome of selection. Finally, I marked off dysteleology 



1 Generelle Morphologie der Organismen, 2 vols., Berlin, 1866. 



2 Eng. transl. ; The History of Creation, London, 1876. 



