GENESIS OF MAN. 9 



of having inherited these intellectual characteristics, he cites the 

 case as a good example of " atavism," and remarks that " Erasmus 

 Darwin transmitted, according to the law of latent inheritance, de- 

 finite molecular motions in the ganglion cells of his cerebrum to 

 his grandson Charles without their manifesting themselves in his 

 son Robert." 



The importance of Erasmus Darwin's views, however, mixed as 

 they were with some vagaries and unbalanced speculations, was 

 slight as compared with that which we must ascribe to those of 

 Goethe. In his various essays and writings on " Natural Science " 

 in general (1780), on Comparative Anatomy and Osteology (1786), 

 on the Metamorphoses of Plants (1790), and in later works, he has 

 wrought out a philosophy of organic life, which, when carefully 

 analyzed and translated into the terminology now adopted, is found 

 to contain, in their most general and fundamental form, the essen- 

 tial principles of the Darwinian theory of development. A few 

 passages will illustrate this. In 1706 he wrote: "All the 

 more perfect organic natures, under which we see fishes, amphib- 

 ians, birds, mammals, and, at the head of these last, man, are 

 formed according to one original type (Urbild), which in its dura- 

 ble parts only deviates more or less, and is still daily being im- 

 proved and transformed through propagation." It is from this and 

 other passages in which Goethe establishes his doctrine of an origi- 

 nal type or image, which varies only slightly and in detail and not 

 in plan, that the modern adherents of the theory of fixed types seem 

 to have derived their chief arguments. Cuvier must have been con- 

 versant with Goethe's scientific writings, and he may have drawn 

 largely upon them in founding his celebrated system of classifica- 

 tion. But like some other great works that have become author- 

 ity, those of Goethe are found, in some things, to admit of two in- 

 terpretations, and to supply texts looking more than one way. The 

 above passage, taken in connection with others, is now seen still 

 more clearly to give countenance to what is now the powerful rival 

 of the doctrine of types: viz., the doctrine of descent. In another 

 place he says : "An internal original community (Gemeinschaft) lies 

 at the bottom of all organization ; difference of form, on the contrary, 

 arises from the necessary relations to the external world, and we 

 may, therefore, with right assume an original, simultaneous varia- 

 tion and an incessantly progressive transformation, in order to com- 

 prehend the at once constant and deviating phenomena." 



