184 FROM LAMARCK TO ST. HILAIRE. 



synthetic treatment of Nature, introduced into France by Geoffroy, 

 can now no longer be stopped. This matter has now become 

 public through the discussions in the Academy, carried on in the 

 presence of a large audience ; it can no longer be referred to secret 

 committees, or be settled or suppressed behind closed doors.' " 



It is not surprising that Goethe was appreciated 

 in France, and that he was highly praised by- 

 Isidore St. Hilaire. In Cuvier we find the follow- 

 ing allusion to his essays on Comparative Anatomy : 

 " One finds in them, with astonishment, nearly 

 all the propositions which have been separately 

 advanced in recent times." And Richard Owen, 

 somewhat later, wrote : " Goethe had taken the 

 lead in his inquiries into Comparative Osteology." 

 Carus, in his preface to his Transcendental Aiiat- 

 omy, wrote: " If we go back as far as possible 

 into the history of the labours undertaken with the 

 view to arrive at the philosophic conception of the 

 skeleton, we find that the first idea of the meta- 

 morphosis of the osseous forms ; that is, that all 

 forms are but modifications, more or less traceable, 

 of one and the same type ; this idea belongs to 

 Goethe." 



The ' unity of type ' hypothesis, which exercised 

 such a potent influence in Europe, was developed 

 in Goethe's mind in 1 796 ; this was the concep- 

 tion which formed the chief basis of his idea of 

 Evolution: — 



"Thus much, then, we have gained, that we may assert, without 

 hesitation, that all the more perfect organic natures, such as fishes. 



