122 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 



to miracle and dualism, the fruit of the truth just recog- 

 nized, may be suffered to elude the grasp.^" 



By the personal incitement of Cuvier, under whom he 

 studied in 1830, R. Owen endeavoured to gain a clear 

 perception of the basis of homologies. If Cuvier had 

 derived the agreement of organs from teleology by say- 

 ing that organs are alike because and if they have 

 like functions to perform, Owen, in Goethe's fashion, 

 seized upon an archetype to explain the existence of uni- 

 formity amid multiplicity and diversity of detail. The 

 series which repeat themselves in the .organism, such 

 as the vertebrae, and a regular succession in the organ- 

 isms themselves seemed to him not comprehensible as 

 miraculous, creations, but only as the result of natural 

 laws and operating causes, which produce the species in 

 regular sequence and gradual completion, such laws and 

 causes being the servant of predetermining intelligent 

 Will.'^ 



As a scholar pre-eminently familiar with the fossil 

 animal world, it could not remain unknown to this Eng- 

 lish naturalist that the more remote the geological period, 

 the more general and the less specialized is the organi- 

 zation of the species. He was able to trace this particu- 

 larly in the dentition of mammals, and specially also in 

 the condition of those domestic animals which begin with 

 the earliest Tertiary times and gradually assume the un- 

 gulate character. Thus to the question whether species 

 originate by miracle or by law, he replies that he pre- 

 sumes the latter to be in constant operation. This 

 " law " is, however, something quite different from what 

 science is wont to designate by that name. Why does 

 the horse exist? Because it was predestined and pre- 



