110 TIIE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT, 
pillar and butterfly serve as an example. “Imperfect 
and evanescent a creature though the butterfly may be 
as to its species, when compared to the mammal, in the 
metamorphosis which it accomplishes before our eyes, it 
nevertheless exhibits the superiority of a more perfect 
over a less perfect animal. This consists in the deci- 
siveness of its parts, the security that none can be put 
or taken for the other; that each is destined for its 
function, and remains constant to it for ever.” Now, 
however, in the most perfect creatures, the Vertebrata, 
there appeared before Goethe’s eye, a similar rudimentary 
organ, metamorphosing itself within the individual ; this 
was the vertebra. He followed it in its transformations 
along the vertebral column. Impossible as it may be, 
by placing together the first vertebra of the neck with 
the last tail bone to infer their identity, it becomes 
manifest in the gradual transition. 
But what lies in front of the first vertebra of the 
neck? Is the cranium something absolutely different, 
something new, not identical with the vertebral column ? 
This was another perturbing thought which pursued 
Goethe’s every footstep. He pondered and compared ; 
it could not be otherwise ; the cranium must belong 
to the vertebral column, must be nothing more than a 
part of the vertebral column. Through the vacillations 
of his conceptions, he was, as he later expresses himself 
on another occasion, “as an honest observer transported 
into a sort of frenzy.” Then, when in 1790 he picked 
up a bleached sheep’s skull in the Jewish cemetery at 
Venice, “the derivation of the cranium from the verte- 
bral bones was revealed to him.” The more special 
history of Comparative Anatomy has shown how ex- 
