COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



I am not speaking of those creatures there, but 

 of something quite different. I am speaking 

 of the contest, so important for science, between 

 Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, which has 

 just come to an open rupture in the French 

 Academy ! * " At this unexpected turn of the 

 subject poor Soret knew not what to say, and 

 for some minutes, he tells us, his thoughts were 

 quite at a standstill. 



The anecdote well illustrates the immeasurable 

 superiority of Goethe over Comte in prophetic 

 insight into the bearings of the chief scientific 

 question of the immediate future. While Comte 

 was superciliously setting aside the problem of 

 man's origin, as a problem not only insoluble 

 but utterly devoid of philosophic value even if 

 it could be solved, the great German poet and 

 philosopher was welcoming the outbreak of this 

 famous contest on questions of pure morpho- 

 logy, as conducive to the speedy triumph of the 

 development theory, for which he himself had 

 so long been waging battle. But events were 

 hastening that triumph even more rapidly than 

 Goethe could have anticipated. In December, 

 1 83 1, only a few weeks before Goethe was laid 

 in the grave, Mr. Darwin set out upon that 

 voyage around the world, in the course of which 

 he fell in with the facts which suggested his the- 

 ory of the origin of species. The history of the 

 investigation is a memorable one, — worth not- 



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