298 OWEN'S POSITION IN 



alone which Cuvier turned out is amazing, and it 

 hardly ever falls below the level of the highest 

 excellence. Moreover, Cuvier incidentally did as 

 great service to the cause of sound morphology 

 as any of the philosophical anatomists. He 

 worked out the principles of the latter as far as 

 they could be safely carried, and showed that 

 their method must needs, in the end, stop short 

 for want of a criterion. The study of the con- 

 nections of parts, by no means always enables 

 us to determine whether they ' answer to one 

 another ' or not ; and the philosophical anatomists 

 too largely ignored other means of testing their 

 hypotheses. 



The constructive efforts of Goethe, with 

 the Philosophie anatomique of France and the 

 Naturphilosophie of Germany on the one hand, 

 the critical negations of the Cuvierian school on 

 the other, do not represent all the lines of bio- 

 logical work in the period under consideration. 

 There is another, which it is the great defect of 

 Cuvier and his school to have underrated and 

 neglected ; while it is the great misfortune of 

 Geoffroy that it made its importance fully felt too 

 late for him. This is Embryology, or Develop- 

 ment ; that is, the study of the manner in which 

 individual living things acquire the structure 

 which they possess. 



The science of development, in the modern 



