Johann Beseke (1746 - 1802) , during the last twenty-eight 

 years of his life, was professor of law in the academic high 

 school in Mitau (now Elgava, Latvian SSR) . Besides his 

 philosophical, juridical and educational presentations, three 

 fragments of his common works (33) were published; these 

 were devoted to his thoughts on the history of all natural 

 sciences throughout twenty centuries and more. The work on 

 these subjects was interrupted by the author's death. 



In the book of 1797, Beseke reviewed all the different 

 hypotheses proffered up to the middle of the eighteenth 

 century for the explanation of animal regeneration and develop- 

 ment. He divided them into two groups, because one of the 

 hypotheses confirms that organic bodies actually are the 

 outgrowth of other organic bodies, and others consider that 

 organic bodies exist from the beginning of the world. The 

 first group of hypotheses is related to epigenesis, or the 

 true conception and development, and the last to the system 

 of evolution in the broad meaning of the word, which does not 

 allow for the possibility of true development. Some repre- 

 sentatives of the second point of view claimed that the 

 preformed organic rudiments are not actually identified from 

 the beginning with the organic bodies and that only by inter- 

 penetrating with the latter do they acquire the capability of 

 turning into formed organic bodies (system of dissemination) ; 

 others presumed that these rudiments are contained in the 

 organic bodies themselves (system of evolution in the narrow 

 meaning of the word) . In agreement with the latter theory, 

 the preformed rudiments are situated, one into the other, 

 either in the male or in the female body. The first assumption 

 is the theory of preformation, or the system of Leeuwenhoek, 

 and the second is the system of evolution in the narrowest 

 sense of the word, or the system of Malpighi. 



Against all these preformation theories, Beseke with 

 great feeling decidedly set the epigenetic doctrines of Wolff. 

 Wolff, according to Beseke. "has acted against the theoretical 

 possibility of preformation as well as against its factual 

 existence and has confirmed that everywhere in nature there is 

 a true education of what previously was not present." (p. 62) 

 Beseke reproached Wolff only because the latter did not try to 

 declare the contents of the "essential force" which manages 

 the development. Wolff, in Beseke' s view proved that 



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