148 Darwin as an Anthropologist 
The fundamental importance of this comparative morphology of 
the Mammals, as a sound basis of scientific anthropology, was re- 
cognised just before the beginning of the nineteenth century, when 
Lamarck first emphasised (1794) the division of the animal kingdom 
into Vertebrates and Invertebrates. Even thirteen years earlier 
(1781), when Goethe made a close study of the mammal skeleton 
in the Anatomical Institute at Jena, he was intensely interested to 
find that the composition of the skull was the same in man as in the 
other mammals. His discovery of the os intermaaillare in man (1784), 
which was contradicted by most of the anatomists of the time, and 
his ingenious “vertebral theory of the skull,” were the splendid fruit 
of his morphological studies. They remind us how Germany’s greatest 
philosopher and poet was for many years ardently absorbed in the 
comparative anatomy of man and the mammals, and how he divined 
that their wonderful identity in structure was no mere superficial 
resemblance, but pointed to a deep internal connection. In my 
Generelle Morphologie (1866), in which I published the first attempts 
to construct phylogenetic trees, I have given a number of remarkable 
theses of Goethe, which may be called “phyletic prophecies.” They 
justify us in regarding him as a precursor of Darwin. 
In the ensuing forty years I have made many conscientious efforts 
to penetrate further along that line of anthropological research that 
was opened up by Goethe, Lamarck, and Darwin. I have brought 
together the many valuable results that have constantly been reached 
in comparative anatomy, physiology, ontogeny, and palaeontology, and 
maintained the effort to reform the classification of animals and 
plants in an evolutionary sense. The first rough drafts of pedigrees 
that were published in the Generelle Morphologie have been improved 
time after time in the ten editions of my Natiirliche Schipfungs- 
geschichte (1868—1902)*. A sounder basis for my phyletic hypotheses, 
derived from a discriminating combination of the three great records— 
morphology, ontogeny, and palaeontology—was provided in the three 
volumes of my Systematische Phylogenie? (1894 Protists and Plants, 
1895 Vertebrates, 1896 Invertebrates). In my Anthropogenie*® 1 
endeavoured to employ all the known facts of comparative ontogeny 
(embryology) for the purpose of completing my scheme of human 
phylogeny (evolution). I attempted to sketch the historical develop- 
ment of each organ of the body, beginning with the most elemen- 
tary structures in the germ-layers of the Gastraea. At the same time 
I drew up a corrected statement of the most important steps in the 
line of our ancestral series. 
1 Eng. transl.; The History of Creation, London, 1876. 2 Berlin, 1894—96, 
3 Leipzig, 1874, 5th edit. 1905. Eng. transl.; The Evolution of Man, London, 
1905. 
