THEORIES OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION 



many years the colleague of Lamarck at the Jardin des 

 Plantes. Like Goethe, Geoff roy was pre-eminently an 

 anatomist, and, like the great German, he had early 

 been impressed with the resemblances between the 

 analogous organs of different classes of beings. He 

 conceived the idea that an absolute unity of type pre- 

 vails throughout organic nature as regards each set of 

 organs. Out of this idea grew his gradually formed 

 belief that similarity of structure might imply identity 

 of origin that, in short, one species of animal might 

 have developed from another. 



Geoffroy's grasp of this idea of transmutation was by 

 no means so complete as that of Lamarck, and he seems 

 never to have fully determined in his own mind just 

 what might be the limits of such development of spe- 

 cies. Certainly he nowhere includes all organic creat- 

 ures in one line of descent, as Lamarck had done; 

 nevertheless, he held tenaciously to the truth as he saw 

 it, in open opposition to Cuvier, with whom he held a 

 memorable debate at the Academy of Sciences in 1830 

 the debate which so aroused the interest and enthu- 

 siasm of Goethe, but which, in the opinion of nearly 

 every one else, resulted in crushing defeat for Geoffroy, 

 and brilliant, seemingly final, victory for the advocate 

 of special creation and the fixity of species. 



With that all ardent controversy over the subject 

 seemed to end, and for just a quarter of a century to 

 come there was published but a single argument for 

 transmutation of species which attracted any general 

 attention whatever. This oasis in a desert generation 

 was a little book called Vestiges of the \.itural History 

 of Creation, which appeared anonymously in England in 



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