118 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 
now existing from extinct “ancestral races,” was not 
unfamiliar to him. Nor would his remark, “ For we 
have the most distinct remains of organic creatures 
which were unable to perpetuate themselves by active 
reproduction,” exclude his having accepted generally 
the immediate connection, based on direct reproduction, 
of the animal world with fossil races entirely differing 
in structure. For it is quite true that many species, 
genera and groups, passed through, not their prime only, 
but also their decline and total extinction antecedent to 
the present era. 
Yet more. In “ Aphoristic Annotations,” which he 
terms problems, written previous to the year 1823, he 
speaks of “characterless races, which it is scarcely per- 
missible to assign to a species, as they lose themselves in 
boundless varieties,” and he contrasts them “with races 
possessed of a character, which they exhibit afresh in 
all their species, so that they may be ascertained in a 
rational method.” Goethe rests on this fact to illustrate 
his idea of metamorphosis; and we have no right to 
explain the characterless or “disorderly” races in a 
Darwinian sense, as being those of which the forms 
are not established, while those which possess a character 
are divided into easily distinguishable species, because a 
host of intermediate forms have succumbed in the 
struggle for existence. He gave this problem to his 
intelligent young friend, Ernst Mayer, that he might 
work it out, and impart his reflections to his instructor. 
Mayer says: “The more readily the former (the 
genera possessing character) are arranged, the more 
difficult it is to dispose of the latter (those which possess 
no charactcr), But any one who observes them with 
