122 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 
conclusion that consanguinity is the sole solution of the 
similarity of species, and how, nevertheless, by clinging 
to miracle and dualism, the fruit of the truth just recog- 
nized, may be suffered to elude the grasp.”" 
By the personal incitement of Cuvier, under whom he 
studied in 1830, R. Owen endeavoured to gain a clear 
perception of the basis of homologies. If Cuvier had 
derived the agreement of organs from teleology by 
saying that organs are alike because and if they have 
like functions to perform, Owen, in Goethe’s fashion, 
seized upon an archetype to explain the existence of 
uniformity amid multiplicity and diversity of detail. 
The series which repeat themselves in the organism, 
such as the vertebre, and a regular succession in the 
organisms themselves seemed to him not comprehensible 
as miraculous creations, but only as the result of natural 
laws and operating causes, which produce the species in 
regular sequence and gradual completion, such laws and 
causes being the servant of predetermining intelligent 
Will. 
As a scholar pre-eminently familiar with the fossil 
animal world, it could not remain unknown to this 
English naturalist that the more remote the geological 
period, the more general and the less specialized is.the 
organization of the species. He was able to trace this 
particularly in the dentition of mammals, and specially 
also in the condition of those domestic animals which 
begin with the earliest Tertiary times and gradually 
assume the ungulate character. Thus to the question 
whether species originate by miracle or by law, he 
replies that he presumes the latter to be in constant 
operation. This “law” is, however, something quite 
