190 EVOLUTION 



the influence of a changeful environment, 

 both in modifying and in eliminating. But 

 he had another deep idea, which Goethe 

 shared, of an inherent formative impulse in 

 the creature. "In every living being there \ 

 exists a capability of an endless variety of 

 form-assumption; each possesses the power to 

 adapt its organization to the changes of the 

 outer world, and it is this power, put into 

 action by the change of the universe, that 

 has raised the simple zoophytes of the primi- 

 tive world to continually higher stages of 

 organization, and has introduced a count- 

 less variety of species into animate Nature."/ 



BiiLiLis in. ijoethe that we find the fullest 

 expression of tfre idea of the~15na'te t^fldgH^y 

 of a. Hvjpg r.reature to fu]fleFlself -realist jpn. 

 At the same time he held with Lamarck that 



of ]i'fa..pnwf>rfii11 



forn^u" and with Buffon that the orderly 

 growth of form "yields to change from ex- 

 ternally acting causes." 



of ^ inherent 



growth force, has constantly reappeared, 

 notably among the American palseontolo- 

 gists: witness Copy's "bathmism"; and 

 now among the whole rising generation of 

 vitalists, German and other. The anatomist 

 and systematist, the chemical and physical 

 physiologist, have been, and still are, wont 



