362 ZOOLOGY. 



more for humanity, by purging the human mind of deep- 

 rooted errors, of a gross and scandalous character, of forty 

 centuries' growth. But Anatomy has its limits, not with - 

 standing, and these limits were admitted and defined by the 

 Great Master himself. 



" It was not to be expected that a mine of knowledge such 

 as was discovered and first worked by the great Cuvier, should 

 continue to be explored by so many vigorous hands, and that 

 all should go smoothly with the labourers : difficulties soon 

 appeared, and they increased so rapidly in number and in 

 strength, as to cloud with anxiety for the fate of his great 

 discovery the mind of the immortal author of the Ossemens 

 Fossiles. It seemed as if he were about to survive his own 

 vast reputation. So seemingly unimportant a question as the 

 influence of domestication over animal life embarrassed the 

 great anatomist. The anatomical element of inquiry having 

 failed in establishing specific distinctions in the various oxen 

 which ornament the cultivated earth, Cuvier was forced to 

 imagine them to be like the dog, of one species ; Goethe, the 

 transcendentalist, starting from a higher point of view, had 

 arrived at the same conclusion. ' The infinite varieties of the 

 domestic ox,' observed the sublime author of Faust, ' are 

 simply the gift to man of domesticity acting through millions 

 of years.' Such also was Cuvier's opinion, omitting the 

 'millions of years.' What his real opinions were on the 

 influence of time and circumstances he never, so far as I know, 

 communicated to any one. The monumental records of Egypt, 

 depicting man then as he is now, after the lapse of at least 

 four thousand years, were perfectly well known to him. Still 

 greater difficulties he prudently passed by, without a passing 

 notice. And yet his great discovery laid the foundation of 

 Geology, Palaeontology, and a true history of life on the 

 globe. Before him these sciences could not be said to exist. 



" Prior to this eventful scientific era, the German school of 

 philosophic anatomists had made an advance towards the 

 same object, but from a different point of view. Anatomy 

 was still the element of research which they employed, but it 

 was the anatomy of the embryo. At the head of this school 

 was the justly-celebrated Goethe, poet, philosopher, natu- 

 ralist, mathematician ; his genius seemed universal. He it 

 was who first distinctly formuled the law of unity of the 

 organization in all that lives or has lived. The doctrine of 

 * arrest of development' came soon after into vogue, chiefly 

 through Meckel and the German schools of anatomists, a 



