72 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



, end reaches its highest glory in the tree, which is im- 

 movable and stiff, the animal in man who possesses the 

 greatest elasticity and freedom." Professor Haeckel 

 considers this to be a remarkable passage, but I do not 

 think it should cause its author to rank among the 

 founders of the evolution theory, though he may justly 

 claim to have been one of the first to adopt it. Goethe's 

 anatomical researches appear to have been more im- 

 portant, but I cannot find that he insisted on any new 

 principle, or grasped any unfamiliar conception, which 

 had not been long since grasped and widely promul- 

 gated by Bufibn and by Dr, Erasmus Darwin. 



Treviranus (1776-1837), whom Professor Haeckel 

 places second to Goethe, is clearly a disciple of Buffon, 

 and uses the word "degeneration" in the same sense 

 as Buffon used it many years earlier^ that is to say, as 

 " descent with modification," without any reference to 

 whether the offspring was, as Buffon says, " perfectionne 

 ou degrade." He cannot claim, any more than Goethe, 

 to rank as a principal figure in the history of evolution. 



Of Oken, Professor Haeckel says that his ' Natur- 

 philosophie,' which appeared in 1809 — ^in the same year, 

 that is to say, as the ' Philosophic Zoolqgique ' of Lamarck 

 — was " the nearest approach to the natural theory of 

 descent, newly established by Mr. Charles Darwin," 

 of any work that appeared in the first decade of our 

 century. But I do not detect any important difference 

 of principle between his system and that of Dr. Erasmus 

 Darwin, among whose disciples he shoulil be reckoned. 



" We now turn," says Professor Haeckel after referring 

 to a few more German writers who adopted a belief in 



