y 



tion, we can see that Baer stopped short when he ought to have gone 

 on. He was satisfied when he had applied his law of " progress from 

 the general to the special," so far as to make it clear that the manifold 

 forms of animal life were educts of a few general types. He did not 

 see, and to the end refused to admit, that these types were themselves 

 the educts of an evolution. And the antagonism which in his later 

 years he manifested towards modern views of evolution and recent 

 embryology was based on the feeling that the new doctrine swept 

 away the necessity for ultimate abstract types. Like the theory of 

 epicycles in the old astronomy, Baer's views have succumbed before 

 a simpler conception, of the truth of which the results of his own 

 labours afford some of the strongest supports. Like the epicyclists, 

 Baer largely prepared the way for the wider doctrine which has 

 swallowed up his own. 



