106 TIIE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 
animal is perfected.” But in Man, as the highest animal, 
the whole animal world is contained ; he is the actual 
Microcosm. 
If Natural Philosophy be the expression and logical 
connection of all well-observed facts, we could not now 
designate as Natural Philosophy, Oken’s well-rounded 
system, laid down in 3562 propositions, with their in- 
ferential conceits of Position, Negation, and Polarity, 
the absolutely meaningless formula of + 0 — without 
any real penetration of the subject-matter. Various 
and important incitements to research were nevertheless 
supplied by it, and we have been the more anxious to 
call attention to this system, as it implies at least as 
much as the vague formule and ideas of “intrinsic de- 
velopment,” the “principle of progress,” the “conversion 
of the lower into the higher,” and the whole litany of 
indecision and indistinctness. 
In this chapter we shall not adhere to chronological 
succession, but merely characterize various theories of 
organic nature; and we may therefore now revert to 
Goethe, who in Haeckel’s opinion forestalled his age on 
the great question which forms the subject of this book, 
and deserves to be honoured as the independent founder 
of the theory of descent in Germany.** We cannot 
ascribe this importance to Goethe, for we must deny 
the very cardinal-point on which Haeckel lays most 
weight,—that Goethe regards species not merely as 
modified phenomena of the variable idea of the genus, 
but as the sum of bodies modifiable in the concrete. 
What principally induces us to make detailed mention 
of Goethe is his penetration of the idea of type, which 
since the time of Buffon had becn for two gencra- 
