122 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 



conclusion that consanguinity is the sole solution of the 

 similarity of species, and how, nevertheless, by clinging 

 to miracle and dualism, the fruit of the truth just recog- 

 nized, may be suffered to elude the grasp.'^" 



By the personal incitement of Cuvier, under whom he 

 studied in 1830, R. Owen endeavoured to gain a clear 

 perception of the basis of homologies. If Cuvier had 

 derived the agreement of organs from teleology by 

 saying that organs are alike because and if they have 

 like functions to perform, Owen, in Goethe's fashion, 

 seized upon an archetype to explain the existence of 

 uniformity amid multiplicity and diversity of detail. 

 The series which repeat themselves in the organism, 

 such as the vertebrae, and a regular succession in the 

 organisms themselves seemed to him not comprehensible 

 as miraculous creations, but only as the result of natural 

 laws and operating causes, which produce the species in 

 regular sequence and gradual completion, such laws and 

 causes being the servant of predetermining intelligent 

 Will. '• 



As a scholar pre-eminently familiar with the fossil 

 animal world, it could not remain unknown to this 

 English naturalist that the more remote the geological 

 period, the more general and the less specialized is the 

 organization of the species. He was able to trace this 

 particularly in the dentition of mammals, and specially 

 also in the condition of those domestic animals which 

 begin with the earliest Tertiary times and gradually 

 assume the ungulate character. Thus to the question 

 whether species originate by miracle or by law, he 

 replies that he presumes the latter to be in constant 

 operation. This " law " is. however, something quite 



