32 THE SKULL THEORY 



century, when comparative anatomy was beginning to 

 constitute a special science; and the genetic inquiry 

 as to the morphological significance and development 

 of the skull soon grew out of it. It was no less a 

 man than our greatest German poet who first answered 

 this question, and propounded the theory that the 

 skull was neither more nor less than the modified 

 foremost end of the vertebral column, and that the 

 separate groups of bones which lie behind one another 

 in the human skull, as in that of all the higher 

 vertebrata, answer to the separate modified vertebrae. 

 This " vertebral theory " of the skull, which Yon 

 Goethe and Oken simultaneously and independently 

 attempted to prove, aroused universal interest and 

 maintained its ground for seventy years, while many 

 attempts were made to improve and enlarge upon it in 

 detail. 



A quite new light was thrown on this, as on every 

 other morphological question, as soon as Darwin in 

 1859 had once more put into our hands the torch of 

 the doctrine of descent. The inquiry as to the origin 

 of the skull now assumed a real and tangible form. 

 Since all vertebrate animals, from fishes up to man, agree 

 so completely as to their essential internal structure 

 that they can be rationally conceived of no otherwise 

 than as branches of one stock and as descendants of one 

 parent-form, the distinctly formulated question as to 



