GENESIS OF MAN. 1 1 



perfect condition they are scarcely to be distinguished. This much, 

 however, we may say, that those creatures that now and then ap- 

 appear, having relationships with plants and with animals difficult 

 to separate, perfect themselves in two opposite directions, so that 

 the plant at last glorifies itself in the tree, durable and fixed, the 

 animal, in man, with the highest degree of mobility and freedom." 



The ambiguity of Goethe's language is due to the profundity 

 and high generality of his ideas, coupled with a certain poetic 

 vagueness so indispensable to his genius. In the former quality, 

 though not at all in the latter, one is reminded of that profound 

 and comprehensive analysis which, with all the materials of that 

 later date (1866), and with the power of logic characteristic of 

 England's foremost philosopher, Herbert Spencer, in his Biology, 

 (vol. 1, ch. xi., and xii.), has made of these same principles; a 

 treatise, I may add, which Haeckel has indeed recognized, 3 but 

 upon which he could scarcely have failed to place more emphasis 

 if he had been thoroughly acquainted with it. 



Quite different in method and character from Goethe's contribu- 

 tion to the theory of transmutation and descent was that of La- 

 marck. Whatever his philosophy may have lacked in profundity, 

 it was not open to the charge of ambiguity. All its shortcomings 

 were amply compensated for by the wealth of illustration and the 

 multiplicity of facts drawn directly from nature, which, as a life- 

 long naturalist, he was able to bring to its support. In this respect 

 (and this is after all the chief consideration), the now celebrated, 

 though long neglected, Philosophic Zoologique is alone, of all the 

 works that had preceded it or were contemporary with it, worthy 

 of a serious comparison with the Origin of Species or the Descent 

 of Man. And it is certainly a remarkable coincidence and may 

 have for some readers, if no other, at least a mnemonic value, that 

 the Philosophic Zoologique and the Origin of Species were separated 

 by the space of just half a century, the former appearing in 1809, 

 the latter in 1859. The interest of this circumstance is still further 

 heightened by the fact that Charles Darwin was born in the year 

 1809, the same in which the great precursor of his own works like- 

 wise issued into the world ; as if its subtle influence had wafted 

 across the channel and breathed its mysterious afflatus into the 

 nostrils of the new-born herald of its principles ! 



3 Schopfungsgeschichte, 5 Aufl. pp. 106, 657. 



