INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 13 



logical Faculty of Judgment^ he firmly supports the dualistic 

 view and ascribes the creation of organisms to God, according 

 to his special aim and intention. 



Fortunately, about the same time the doctrine of the origin 

 and evolution of organisms found champions in those thinkers 

 who, as forerunners of the great naturalist and philosopher, 

 Charles Darwin, merit our respect. In France it was La- 

 marck, the celebrated author of the Histoire naturelle des 

 animaux sans vertebres, who in his Philosophie Zoologique 

 (published 1809) set f r th the view that the entire .animal 

 world as at present existing must be considered as descended 

 in changed form from earlier organisms, a theory which was 

 republished in elaborated form in 1815. 



Lamarck explained the gradual transformation of animals as 

 the result of use and habit, whereas his friend, Geoffroy St. 

 Hilaire sought the cause in the modifications of the qualificative 

 and quantitative state of our atmosphere. Both were defeated 

 in the contest with Cuvier, which Goethe followed with so deep 

 an interest, but the struggle was taken up by other men, each 

 of whom brought to it his own conception of the story of 

 creation. 



Both Lamarck and St. Hilaire held the theory that the higher 

 organisms have been developed, through progressive modifica- 

 tion, from a few original types of the simplest organisation. 



Oken, the German naturalist philosopher, could not con- 

 ceive of living creatures having arisen by other means than 

 that of original generation ; hence his view that germs of 

 life, called by him Infusoria, originated in the bed of the 

 ocean, and through the absorption and discharge of gases, in 

 other words through breathing, developed into living organ- 

 isms. In his opinion all higher organisms, man necessarily 

 included, are constructed from an infinite number of Infusoria, 

 and after death are again resolved into the separate elements of 

 the organic substance whence they sprang. Apart from the 

 fact that what Oken described as Infusoria were discovered 

 later on by the microscopist Schwann to be cells, he has still 

 given us no satisfactory explanation of the actual construction 

 of organisms out of his so-called Infusoria, and the progressive 

 development of the lower into the higher forms. 



