268 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



works of Lamarck; this circumstance Haeckel 

 truly calls a tragic loss to science, for Goethe 

 would have made the ignored and buried evolu- 

 tionary principles of the Philosophie Zoologique 

 known to the world. Goethe's inspiration was un- 

 doubtedly drawn partly from Buifon; he also 

 imbibed the Greek influence, and in his general 

 view of Nature, expressed in his Gott und Welt, 

 we see the ideas of God working in Nature and 

 of the unity of the development process. This 

 he also brought out in the dialogue between 

 Thales and Anaxagoras in the WalpurgisnacJit, 

 Here is unfolded the conception of the uniform- 

 ity of past and present processes in geology and 

 cosmogony. 



It is not surprising that Goethe was appre- 

 ciated in France and that he was highly praised 

 by Isidore St. Hilaire. In Cuvier we find the 

 following allusion to his essays on comparative 

 anatomy: "One finds in them, with astonishment, 

 nearly all the propositions which have been 

 separately advanced in recent times." Richard 

 Owen, somewhat later, wrote that Goethe had 

 "taken the lead in his inquiries into Comparative 

 Osteology," and Carus said:^ 



If we go back as far as possible into the history of 

 the labors undertaken with the view to arrive at the 



^Preface to Transcendental Anatomy, 



