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 anatomiqtie of France and the 
Nahti'philosopkie 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 
