Sept. 28, 1882] 



NA TURE 



539 



from the development series of the other vertebrates is indicated 

 w ith special clearness in his comparison of the human skull with 

 that of lower mammals. He here expressly points out several 

 places in the human skull as remains of the animal skull "which 

 are found in stronger proportions in ■uch a low organisation, but 

 have not quite disappeared in man, in spite rf his elevation." 



No less does his celebrated discovery of the intra-maxillary bone 

 testify to the same conviction. Man, like the other mammals, 

 having cutting teeth must also, Goethe concluded, ^possess the intra- 

 maxillary bone which showed it- elf in the other mammals ; and 

 in point of fact after the most careful anatomical investigations 

 he established his point, although it ha;l been cisputed by the 

 highest anatomical authorities. 



Highly remarkable, moreover, in this respect is the agreement 

 Goethe expresses with the kindred view of Kant in his "Critique 

 of the Faculty of Judgment," a work the "great main thoughts 

 of which were entirely analogous with his own work, action, and 

 thought hitherto." The great Konigsberg philosopher had 

 enunciated the descent of all organic beings from a common 

 mother (from man down to polyp) as a hypothesis 

 which "alone was in harmony with the principle of the 

 Mechanism of Nature, without which a Science rf Nature was alto- 

 gether impossible." This theory of descent, however, he had at the 

 -ame time called "a daring adventure of reason/' In reference 

 to this passage Goethe remarks: " Hid I first unconsciously 

 and in obedience to inward impulse re-tlesly pressed forward in 

 the direction of that Original Form, that Type — had I even 

 succeeded in building up a scheme conformable with Nature ; 

 now at length c< uld nothil g hinder me from boldly maintaining 

 the Adventure of Reason, as the sire of Konigsberg calls it.'' 



Finally, nothing can more str the extraordinary 



interest with which Goethe followed this transformation-theory, 

 down to the end of bis life, than the well-known attention he 

 gave to the dispute between Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Cuvier. 

 "'Ibis event is for me of altogether incredible importance," 

 exclaims 'he grey-headed old man of eighty-one years, with 

 youthful lire, " and I have a right to jubilate over the universal 

 at lasl witnessed, of a cause to which I have devoted my 

 whole life, and which, too, is mine in a quite especial manner." 

 The vivid representations of this most significant dispute, com- 

 pleted by Gi ethe in March, 1S32, just a few days before his 

 death, i the last literary legacy the greatest poet and thinker of 

 the German nation has left behind him ; and to this great intel- 

 lectual contention also his last word applies, " more light." 



It is deeply to be regretted that the " Philosophic Zoolo- 

 gique," by Lamarck, a work of the highest moment which 

 appeared in 1S09, was wholly unknown to Goethe. For just in 

 the development theory of this work, which is quite differently 

 arranged and strictly systematically composed, he would have 

 found much that was wanting to himself, much that would have 

 yielded him the most complete supplement for his own incom- 

 plete studies. In reference as much to the monistic and com- 

 plete elaboration of the development theory as to the many-sided 

 experimental establishment of it on fact, the great work of Jean 

 Lamarck is much more important than the similar essays of all 

 his contemporaries, more particularly of the like-named work of 

 Geoffroy St. Hilaire. When one considers with what extraordinary 

 interest Goethe took up the latter work, it may be concluded 

 that he wc uld have given a much warmer reception still to the 

 rich-thoughted work of Lamarck. 



We cannot I ut regard it as a truly tragic fact, that the " Philo- 

 sophic Zoologique" by Lamarck, one of the greatest productions 

 of the great literary period in the beginning of our century, met, 

 from its outset, with but extremely little attention, and in the 

 course of a few years was utterly forgotten. Not till Darwin 

 fifty years later on breathed new life into the Transformation 

 theory therein established, was the buried treasure again brought 

 into the light of day, and we cannot row- bat describe it as the 

 completest representation of the theory of development prior to 

 tne time of Darwin. Nay, it seems to us the necessary atonement 

 ol a great historical injustice, if again to day (as was done six- 

 teen years ago in the "General Morphology"), we place the 

 great Frenchman side by side w ith the greater Briton and the 

 greatest German. Each of the three great middle — European 

 nations of culture has in the course of a century presented 

 mankind with an intellectual giant of the first rank, who grasped 

 in its entire significance the fundamental conception of the 

 monistic development of the world from natural causes. 



It would carry us much too far were we here to attempt setting 

 forth an abstract of Lamarck's work and comparing it with 



Darwin's. It will suffice to cite some of the weightiest funda- 

 mental conceptions which characterise his theory of nature, and 

 indicate how far he was in advance of his time. For many 

 decades the great French biologist had occupied himself very 

 searchingly with systematic botany and zoology. Testimony of 

 this we have in his two celebrated and much used special work-, 

 the "Flore francaise," and the " Histoire naturelle des animaux 

 sans vertebres." While he was engaged in substantially classifying 

 and describing not merely the foru s already in existence, but also 

 their extinct ancestors which be incorporated into his system, 

 there was disclosed to him the inner morphologic connection 

 between the former and the latter, and from this disclosure he 

 inferred their common descent. All animal and vegetable forms 

 which we distinguish as species, possess, accordingly, but a 

 relative temporary persistence, and the varieties are the be- 

 ginnings of species. The form-group of the species is, therefore, 

 just as artificial a product of our analytic understanding as is the 

 genus, the order, the class, and every other category of the 

 system. The change in the conditions of life, on one hand, the 

 employment or non-employment of the organs, on the other, 

 exercise a constantly transforming influence on the organisms ; 

 they effect by means of adaptation a gradual transformation of 

 forms, the fundamental lineaments of which are through in- 

 heritance transmitted from generation to generation. The 

 tern of animals and plants is in reality, therefore, 

 their genealogical tree, and portrays to us the relations of their 

 blood-kindred-hip. The course of development of life on our 

 globe was, accordingly, continuous and uninterrupted, just as 

 was the course of development of the earth itself. 



While Lamarck thus clearly enunciates ad the essential funda- 

 mental conceptions of our current doctrine of filiation, and by 

 the depth of his morphological knowledge excites our admira- 

 tion, the clear advanced outlooks he tales in his conceptions of 

 are no less surprising. While in his time the fallacy 

 of a supernatural vital force was yet universally prevalent, 

 Lamarck rejected that idea, and maintained that life was only a 

 very complicated physical ) henomenon, For all vital phenomena 

 are based on mechanical processes which are themselves con- 

 ditioned by the constitution of organic matter. The phenomena 

 of goul-life (Seelenlebens) are also, in this re-pect, not different 

 from other vital phenomena. For the idtas and activities of the 

 understanding are based on motional processes in the central 

 nerve-system ; the will in truth is never free, and leason is only 

 a higher degree of development and combinatii 11 of the element-. 



In these and other propositions Lamarck raises himself far 

 above the general theory of nature held by most of his contem- 

 poraries, and sketches a programme of future biology which only 

 in our days has come to be carried out. In view of the great 

 clearness and consistency of his system it is only a matter of 

 course that he should assign to man bis natural place at the head 

 of the vertebrates, and explain the causes of his transformation 

 out of ape-like mammals. With equal acumen, however, he 

 handles one of the darkest and most difficult questions of the 

 whole theory of development, the question regarding the origin 

 of the first living beings on our globe. For the answering of 

 mfe question he assumes that the common earliest genealogical 

 forms of all organisms were absolutely simple beings, and that 

 they came into existence immediately out of inorganic matter in 

 water by Spontaneous generation, through the combined effect of 

 different physical cau'es. Such simplest organisms, however, 

 were at that time not yet at all discovered ; not till half a 

 century afterwards were they actually come upon in the 

 Monera. 



Lamarck reached the great age of eighty-live years ; conse- 

 quently he lived two years longer than Goethe, and twelve years 

 longer than Darwin. But while the two latter enjoyed the 

 happiness of beholding the long beautiful evening of their life 

 glorified by a sun-like splendour of success and worldly fame, 

 poor Lamarck closed his long and laborious life misunderstood, 

 solitary and needy. Ten years before his death he suffered the 

 misfortune of blindness, and could only from memory dictate the 

 last part of his great natural history of invertebrate animals to 

 his two daughters who tenderly nursed him, and whom he left 

 behind him without any means of support. Let us hope that the 

 bitterness of his hard fate was qualified by the consciousness of 

 his having cast the deepe.t glances into the mysteries of creative 

 nature, and that the clear intellectual eye of the blind prophet 

 often descried the laurel garland which thankful posterity would 

 one day lay on his lonely grave. 



Unquestionably the greatest defect in Lamarck's work w as the 



