GOETHE, 113 
the two must be summoned to solve the problem. To 
this archetype, itself incapable of representation,—to 
this abstraction, and to this alone,—Nature, according to 
Goethe, was bound to adhere in her work of creation, 
“without being able, in the slightest measure, to break 
through or overleap the circle.” 
If it be attempted to make it appear that Goethe 
actually proclaimed the doctrine of Descent, or was 
even in a poetical sense its inspired prophet, either too 
much value is attributed to his enunciations of “cease- 
less progressive transformation,” and such like, or the 
sense which he connected with them is not appreciated. 
Now let us take the following passage, which Haeckel 
looks upon as decisive. “Thus much we should have 
gained ; that we may fearlessly affirm all the more perfect 
organic beings, among which we include Fishes, Amphi- 
bians, Birds, Mammals (and at the head of the latter, 
Man), to be formed according to an archetype, which 
merely fluctuates more or less in its very persistent parts, 
and moreover, day by day, completes and transforms 
itself by means of reproduction.” Is it here meant, 
perchance, that the persistent are contrasted with the 
non-persistent parts? By no means. 
Even prior to Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, Goethe had 
spoken of a law, which is, however, no law, nor even an 
expression of facts, namely, that Nature in her work has 
to deal with a given quantity of material to which she 
must adapt it. He does not seem to have been aware 
that Aristotle had affirmed the same, that Nature, if 
she enlarged an organ, did so only at the expense of 
another. A second of the supposed fundamental laws 
discovered by the Frenchman, that an organ would 
