EVIDENCE FURNISHED BY SCIENCE OF LIKENESSES. 125 



be readily seen how we advance through the study of scientific 

 resemblances to questions of deeper import, connected, in these 

 latter days, with the problem of the very beginnings and origin of all 

 living things. Before the days of evolution at least, as represented 

 in its typical phases of modern times speculative philosophy was 

 hard at work, trying to discover the "archetype" underlying the 

 familiar types and varied plans of animal and plant structure. 

 Goethe andOken,for instance, by the most remarkable of coincidences, 

 ventilated an idea concerning the ideal plan of the skull, which had 

 been independently suggested to each philosopher by a casual glance 

 at the bleached skull of a sheep in the one case and of a deer in 

 the other. This idea was expressed in the theory worked out with 

 patience and care amongst ourselves by Professor Owen, and known 

 as the " vertebral theory of the skull." Briefly stated, it was held 

 that the skull in reality consisted of modified vertebra (or joints of 

 the backbone); and that, so far from being a something different from 

 the other parts of the skeleton, the skull was really modelled on the 

 type of the spine. Owen recognised four such vertebrae in the skull ; 

 and it need hardly be remarked that the views of Owen, as expressions 

 of philosophical anatomy, were far in advance of those of Oken and 

 Goethe, the former of whom went so far in the matter of specula- 

 tion pure and simple as to assert that in the skull the whole body 

 was represented in miniature. The head, according to Oken, was 

 a kind of multum in parvo of the bodily structures. Therein his 

 subjective philosophy actually found fingers and toes in the shape of 

 the teeth. But the history of zoology includes the recital of a hot 

 and strong controversy over the ideas emanating from Oken and 

 Goethe, and emended and improved by Owen. Soon Owen's views 

 were denied and combated, amongst others by Huxley, in 1858, who 

 held them to be disproved by the study of the skulFs development. 

 The skull from its earliest phases was maintained to exhibit a very 

 marked difference from the spine : and if two structures thus differed 

 in their earliest phases, and when their type should have been most 

 apparent, how, it was asked, could their identity be insisted upon ? 

 A long and elaborate series of researches has, since the time we speak 

 of, been undertaken with reference to the homology of the skull. 

 And with what result, it may be asked, to the idea of real likeness 

 or unlikeness between skull and spine ? The answer to this question 

 would vary with the scientific predilections of the person who replied. 

 But it is not too much to assert that the impetus which was first given 

 to the search after a likeness has been increased by the light which evo- 

 lution and the science of likenesses have together thrown on the reason 

 why not merely skull and spine should resemble each other, but why 

 likenesses and differences due to multifarious and varying conditions 

 of life and development should also exist between these structures. 



