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body is so small but contains a part of the divine substance within itself, by which it is animated." This sublime conception of God is based upon the religion within the sphere of which the noblest minds of antiquity as well as of modern times have thought and lived, viz. Pantheism. It is of this noble idea of God that Goethe says: "Certainly there does not exist a more beautiful worship of God than that which needs no image, but which arises in our heart from converse with Nature." By it we arrive at the sublime, pantheistic idea of the Unity of God and Nature.

CHAPTER IV.

THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT ACCORDING TO GOETHE AND OKEN.

Scientific Insufficiency of all Conceptions of a Creation of Individual Species. -Necessity of the Counter-Theories of Development.-Historical Survey of the Most Important Theories of Development.-Greek Philosophy. The Meaning of Natural Philosophy.-Goethe.-His Merits as a Naturalist.-His Metamorphosis of Plants. His Vertebral Theory of the Skull.-His Discovery of the Mid Jawbone in Man.— Goethe's Interest in the Dispute between Cuvier and Geoffroy St. Hilaire. Goethe's Discovery of the Two Organic Formative Principles, of the Conservative Principle of Specification (by Inheritance), and of the Progressive Principle of Transformation (by Adaptation).— Goethe's Views of the Common Descent of all Vertebrate Animals, including Man.-Theory of Development according to Gottfried Rein. hold Treviranus.-His Monistic Conception of Nature.-Oken.—His Natural Philosophy.-Oken's Theory of Protoplasm.-Oken's Theory of Infusoria (Cell Theory).

ALL the different ideas which we may form of a separate and independent origin of the individual organic species by creation lead us, when logically carried out, to a socalled anthropomorphism, that is, to imagining the Creator as a man-like being, as was shown in our last chapter. The Creator becomes an organism who designs a plan, reflects upon and varies this plan, and finally forms creatures according to this plan, as a human architect

would his building. If even such eminent naturalists as Linnæus, Cuvier, and Agassiz, the principal representatives of the dualistic hypothesis of creation, could not arrive at a more satisfactory view, we may take it as evidence of the insufficiency of all those conceptions which would derive the various forms of organic nature from a creation of individual species.

Some naturalists, indeed, seeing the complete insufficiency of these views, have tried to replace the idea of a personal Creator by that of an unconsciously active and creative Force of Nature; yet this expression is evidently merely an evasive phrase, as long as it is not clearly shown what this force of nature is, and how it works. Hence these attempts, also, are of no value whatever to science. In fact, whenever an independent origin of the different forms of animals and plants has been assumed, naturalists have found themselves compelled to fall back upon so many "acts of creation," that is, on supernatural interferences of the Creator in the natural course of things, which in all other cases goes on without interference.

It is true that several teleological naturalists, feeling the scientific insufficiency of a supernatural “creation," have endeavoured to save the hypothesis by wishing it to be understood that creation" is nothing else than a way of coming into being, unknown and inconceivable to us." The eminent Fritz Müller has cut off from this sophistic evasion every chance of escape by the following striking remark: "It is intended here only to express in a disguised manner the shamefaced confession, that they neither have, nor care to have, any opinion about the origin of species. According to this explanation of the word, we might as well speak

of the creation of cholera, or syphilis, of the creation of a conflagration, or of a railway accident, as of the creation of man" ("Jenaische Zeitschrift," bd. v. p. 272).

In the face, then, of these hypotheses of creation, which are scientifically insufficient, we are forced to seek refuge in the counter-theory of development of organisms, if we wish to come to a rational conception of the origin of organisms. We are forced and obliged to do so, even if the theory of development only throws a glimmer of probability upon a mechanical, natural origin of the animal and vegetable species; but all the more if, as we shall see, this theory explains all facts simply and clearly, as well as completely and comprehensively. The theories of development are by no means, as they often falsely are represented to be, arbitrary fancies, or wilful products of the imagination, which only attempt approximately to explain the origin of this or that individual organism; but they are theories founded strictly on science, which explain in the simplest manner, from a fixed and clear point of view, the whole of organic natural phenomena, and more especially the origin of organic species, and demonstrate them to be the necessary consequences of mechanical processes in nature.

As I have already shown in the second chapter, all these theories of development coincide naturally with that general theory of the universe which is usually designated as the uniform or monistic, often also as the mechanical or causal, because it only assumes mechanical causes, or causes working by necessity (causæ efficientes), for the explanation of natural phenomena. In like manner, on the other hand, the supernatural hypotheses of creation which we have already discussed coincide completely with the opposite

view of the universe, which in contrast to the former is called the twofold or dualistic, often the teleological or vital, because it traces the organic natural phenomena to final causes, acting and working for a definite purpose (causa finales). It is this deep and intrinsic connection of the different theories of creation with the most important questions of philosophy that incites us to their closer examination.

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The fundamental idea, which must necessarily lie at the bottom of all natural theories of development, is that of a gradual development of all (even the most perfect) organisms out of a single, or out of a very few, quite simple, and quite imperfect original beings, which came into existence, not by supernatural creation, but by spontaneous generation, or archigony, out of inorganic matter. reality, there are two distinct conceptions united in this fundamental idea, but which have, nevertheless, a deep intrinsic connection-namely, first, the idea of spontaneous generation (or archigony) of the original primary beings; and secondly, the idea of the progressive development of the various species of organisms from those most simple primary beings. These two important mechanical conceptions are the inseparable fundamental ideas of every theory of development, if scientifically carried out. As it maintains the derivation of the different species of animals and plants from the simplest, common primary species, we may term it also the Doctrine of Filiation, or Theory of Descent; as there is also a change of species connected with it, it may also be termed the Transmutation Theory.

While the supernatural histories of creation must have originated thousands of years ago, in that very remote

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