ON THE GENETIC VIEW OF NATURE. 



313 



it introduced him to the study of animal life from that 

 side where organisation, the phenomena and the organs 

 of life were the simplest, rudimentary as it were, and 

 unformed. Here the great differences of form, the 

 morphological differences which the observation of the 

 higher and more developed creatures force upon our 

 attention, disappear; not the marked differences, but 

 the numerous relations, the endless varieties and re- 

 semblances, seem to command our consideration. These 

 seem to be much more likely to " make us understand 

 the beginnings of all organisation as well as the cause 

 of its complexity and of its development." l Now in 

 descending in the scale of the living objects of nature, 

 Lamarck was struck by the fact that many of the 

 phenomena of life which in the higher animals seemed 

 to originate within were in the lower creatures produced 



most inaccessible. According to 

 Huxley (Lecture "On the Study 

 of Biology," 1876, and " Evolution 

 in Biology," ' Ency. Brit.,' 9th ed.), 

 there were simultaneously three 

 independent attempts to treat the 

 phenomena of organic life as a 

 whole and in connection, emanat- 

 ing from Bichat and Lamarck in 

 France, and from G. R. Treviranus 

 in Germany. The great but un- 

 finished work of the latter, with 

 the title ' Biologic oder Philoso- 

 phic der lebenden Natur,' was 

 begun in 1796, when the author 

 was only twenty, but the first 

 volume was not published till 1802, 

 one year after Lamarck's ' Hydro- 

 ge"ologie. ' Haeckel in his ' Natur- 

 liche Schopfungs geschichte' gives 

 some account of Treviranus' ideas 

 (Band I. Vorlesung 4). Although 

 so much has been written about 

 "Biology," the definition of the 

 science is still uncertain. Prof. 



Goebel says : ' ' The word Biology 

 is one of those conceptions of 

 modern times which have not yet 

 arrived at a generally accepted 

 limitation. Some understand by 

 it the whole science of living 

 things, others only the doctrine 

 of the phenomena of life in con- 

 trast to the purely descriptive 

 branches " ( ' Pflanzeubiologische 

 Schilderungen,' Marburg, 1889, vol. 

 i. p. 1). With Lamarck biology was 

 only one division of a general 

 science of nature, for he says 

 (' Hydrogdologie,' p. 8): "Toutes 

 ces considerations partagent natur- 

 ellement la physique terrestre en 

 trois parties essentielles, dont la 

 premiere doit comprendre la the"orie 

 de 1'atmosphere, la Mete"orologie, 

 la seconde celle de la croute externe 

 du globe, 1'Hydrogeologie ; la troi- 

 sieme enfin, celle des corps vivants, 

 la Biologie." 



1 Philos. Zool. , vol. i. p. 30. 



