KANT’S BIOLOGICAL THEORIES. 103 
Some passages are, however, very remarkable, in which 
Kant in a surprising manner deviates from this mode of 
viewing things, and expresses, more or less distinctly, the 
fundamental idea of the Theory of Descent. He even as- 
serts the necessity of a genealogical conception of the series 
of organisms, if we at all wish to understand it scien- 
tifically. The most important and remarkable of these pas- 
sages occurs in his “Methodical System of the Teleological 
Faculty of Judgment” (§ 79), which appeared in 1790 in the 
“Criticism of the Faculty of Judgment.” Considering the 
extraordinary interest which this passage possesses, both for 
forming a correct estimate of Kant’s philosophy, as well as 
for the Theory of Descent, I shall here insert it verbatim. 
“Tt is desirable to examine the great domain of organized 
nature by means of a methodical comparative anatomy, in 
order to discover whether we may not find in it something 
resembling a system, and that too in connection with the 
mode of generation, so that we may no longer be compelled 
to stop short with a mere consideration of forms as they are 
—which gives us no insight into their generation—and need 
no longer give up in despair all hope of gaining a, full insight 
into this department of nature. The agreement of so many 
kinds of animals in a certain common plan of structure, which 
seems to be visible not only in their skeletons, but also in the 
arrangement of the remaining parts—so that a wonderfully 
simple typical form, by the shortening and lengthening of 
some parts, and by the suppression and development of 
others, might be able to produce an immense variety of 
species—gives us a ray of hope, though feeble, that here 
perhaps some result may be obtained, by the application of 
the principle of the mechanism of nature, without which, 
