104 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT, 
VI. 
Natural Philosophy — Goethe — Predestined Transformation according to 
Richard Owen—Lamark. 
WE have hitherto confined ourselves essentially to the 
contemplation of the phenomena of the animal world as 
facts, avoiding as far as possible any examination of the 
correlation of these facts, or any criticism of the attempts 
to explain them. It was nevertheiess necessary to single 
out from the history of our science some few impulses of 
which the after-effects extend to the present time, and 
of which a knowledge is conducive to the comprehension 
of prevailing views, tendencies, and prejudices. For this 
reason we again revert to the evolutionary history of 
Biology and Comparative Anatomy, that we may trace 
the present currents to their sources. Since the middle 
of last century, there has been no lack of leading ideas 
in the organic natural sciences, such, for instance, as are 
contained in Buffon’s magnificent project of a picture of 
the world. But if it is a question of a single compre- 
hensive solution of the organic world, we are at once 
reminded of the claims preferred by Natural Philo- 
sophy in the first decades of this century, to explain the 
universe; to derive from the whole, not only matter 
in the abstract, but the being and origin of organic 
bodies. When the Philosophy of Identity began to 
