THE HISTORY OF OUR SPECIES. 81 



were not created by a supernatural miracle, but evolved 

 by natural processes, their ancestral tree is their 

 " natural system." The first attempt to frame a 

 system in this sense was made by myself in 1866, 

 in my General Morphology of Organisms. The first 

 volume of this work ("General Anatomy") dealt 

 with the " mechanical science of the developed forms "; 

 the second volume ("General Evolution ") was occupied 

 with the science of the " developing forms." The 

 systematic introduction to the latter formed a " genea- 

 logical survey of the natural system of organisms." 

 Until that time the term " evolution " had been taken 

 to mean exclusively, both in zoology and botany, the 

 development of individual organisms — embryology, 

 or metamorphic science. I established the opposite 

 view, that this history of the embryo (ontogeny) must 

 be completed by a second, equally valuable, and 

 closely-connected branch of thought — the history of 

 the race (phylogeny). Both these branches of evolu- 

 tionary science are, in my opinion, in the closest 

 causal connection ; this arises from the reciprocal 

 action of the laws of heredity and adaptation ; it has 

 a precise and comprehensive expression in my " funda- 

 mental law of biogeny." 



As the new views I had put forward in my General 

 Morphology met with very little notice, and still less 

 acceptance, from my scientific colleagues, in spite of 

 their severely scientific setting, I thought I would 

 make the most important of them accessible to a 

 wider circle of informed readers by a smaller work, 

 written in a more popular style. This was done in 

 1868, in The Natural History of Creation (a series of 

 popular scientific lectures on evolution in general, and 

 the systems of Darwin, Goethe, and Lamarck in 



G 



