gradually developed, and at last tentacula are formed at these parts of the head.'

I have spoken somewhat at length on Lamarck's theory, because in both Darwin's and Hæckel's systems there are some analogies to it. Of Darwin's other precursors, I will only mention Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire (1772-1844; we are not now concerned with his son Isidore Geoffroy, 1805-1861). The dispute between him and his famous colleague Cuvier in the Academy turned principally on the question as to whether the animals now existing were descended from the animals of the earlier geological periods. Cuvier disputed the genealogical connection between the recent and the fossil animals; Geoffroy maintained that the present animals are descended from the fossil animals, e.g. the crocodiles of the present day from the primæval Saurians. Geoffroy does not appear to have gone farther in assuming a possible mutability of species, at any rate not nearly so far as Lamarck and Darwin. It was this dispute between the two French savants, which reached its climax at a sitting of the Academy July 19, 1830, in which Goethe was so much interested. that on August 2 he saluted an acquaintance in Weimar with the exclamation, "Well, what do you think of this great event? The volcano has burst forth, everything is in flames, and there are no more negotiations behind closed doors." Goethe's friend in his innocence thought that the old man was talking of the revolution of July, the first news of which had arrived at Wiemar on that day. Goethe, however, cared

1 Philosophie zoologique (nouvelle edition, revue et précédée d'une introduction biographique, par Ch. Martins. Paris 1873).

2

3

very little about it in comparison with the dispute at the Academy; and if Hæckel, who tells the story,1 seeks at length to prove that Goethe also was a precursor of Darwin's, we must pardon it in a Jena professor. A theory similar to Lamarck's was brought forward in England in an anonymous book, which was translated into German by Vogt in 1849, and which I have already repeatedly mentioned. Vogt, who then held different views from those he has at present, says in his notes to the translation, that these speculations are quite absurd. Oddly enough, Charles Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, held the same theory as Lamarck.*

I now come to the man who gives the name to the controversy which divides scientific men into two opposite camps. C. Darwin, who was born in 1808 and died in 1882, had already drawn up a sketch of his theory in 1844. But an outward inducement was necessary in order to persuade him to come forward

1 Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, p. 79.

2 Semper, Der Hackelismus, p. 34, says: "It is always represented to the public that Goethe was a conscious supporter of the Darwinian theory. O. Schmidt's protest against Hæckel's entirely false conception of Goethe's opinions is steadily ignored by the Jena savants." Dr. Kossmann, in a paper called "War Goethe ein Mitbegründer der Descendenz theorie?" (see the Proceedings of the Heidelberg Ass. for Natural History and Medicine, new series, vol. i., Heidelberg 1875) shows by carefully comparing the opinions stated by Hæckel to have been expressed by Goethe, and the real expressions of the latter, that the quotations from Goethe given by Hæckel are completely inaccurate. Cf. Zöckler, Op. cit. ii. 597. H. Zöckler, ii. 601. For Darwin's other predecessors in Germany, Treviranus, Oken, and others, see Hæckel, Op. cit. p. 83. Jean Paul criticizes these theories of development in the Museum (1814), iii. (Sammtl. Werke, Berlin 1827, vol. xlix. p. 58).

3 Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.

Zöckler, Darwin's Grossvater als Arzt, Dichter und Naturphilosoph. ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Darwinismus. Heidelberg 1880.

openly. In 1858 he received from an acquaintance who had travelled in India for many years-A. R. Wallace a MS. with the request that he would have it published in an English periodical. To his surprise Darwin found that the paper contained a theory precisely similar to the one he had thought out.1 He published his friend's paper in a periodical in August 1858, and with it a short abstract from his own MS., and in November 1859 he followed it up with the book which has at all events made his name immortal, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, and on the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

2

Edition followed edition in England, and translations appeared in Germany and other countries. Darwin himself said that this somewhat comprehensive work was only a preliminary extract from a more exhaustive work, which was to contain the whole mass of the observations which he could bring forward in support

1 On Wallace's theory, see Huber, Die Lehre Darwins, pp. 45, 203; and Quatrefages in the Journal des Savants, 1870, Sept. p. 529. Zöckler, Op. cit. ii. 634.

2 The American, Hudson Tuttle, published a book called, Arcana of Nature, or the History and Laws of Creation, Boston 1859, at the same time as did Darwin the Origin of Species. H. M. Achner, who translated it into German, says he did so more as a curiosity than because of its intrinsic value." The author practically agrees in all essentials with the writer of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, but he is decidedly more atheistic. He is a "medium," through whom spirits communicate with man; he has written several books on this subject, and "amongst other things he has depicted on a piece of linen stretched on cardboard, 3600 feet long, the whole process of formation which the earth's crust has undergone with all its paleontological attributes." "This," he says, "he painted, being himself passive, and guided by unseen powers." The same powers dictated to him his book on the Creation, as he acknowledges in his dedication of it to them, in which he declines the authorship for himself. Cf. Zöckler, Op. cit. ii. 612. See also his paper, Die Speciesfrage," Jahrb. für Deutsche Theologie, 1860, p. 679.

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of his theory. Up to 1868, however, only one portion of this work appeared, dealing with the most unimportant part of the system, that is, with the changes which are brought about in animals and plants through the artificial breeding of man. In the year 1871 a third work by Darwin appeared, called The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. In one part of this work he completes and modifies his system by dealing with sexual selection in addition to the so-called natural selection; in the other part he endeavours to prove that his theory is applicable to man also, that he also has been evolved by natural development from low organic forms, a conclusion which in his first book he either passed over in silence or only just mentioned, but which most of his followers had at once seen and vociferously announced. Other books which have since appeared are of less importance to his theory.

There can be no object in recapitulating here the names of the several eminent men to have declared themselves for and against Darwin's theory. The controversy has often become so lively that Pfaff is hardly exaggerating when he says, "There is no example in the history of natural science in which a hypothesis or anything connected with it has excited people's passions to such an extent as has Darwin's hypothesis on the origin of species." The fact that the Darwinian theory has in many cases been discussed, not with the repose and objectiveness with which purely scientific problems are usually treated, but with

1 Cf. Huber, Die Lehre Darwin's, p. 93. G. Seydlitz, Die Darwin'sche Theorie, Dorpat 1871, p. 9; Zts. für Ethnologie, 1871, p. 56.

2 Die neuesten Forschungen, p. 115.

the eagerness which is generally reserved for political, religious, and party questions, is explained by the fact that such religious questions are very naturally raised by the Darwinian theory. Even if we put aside its application to man, if in reality, as Darwin says, all plants and animals spring by natural development from a few very simple forms, it is only necessary to suppose further that these simple primæval forms have originated by spontaneous generation from inorganic matter, to make the hypothesis of a Creator apparently unnecessary in the earth's history. No doubt this is only apparent, it is not so in reality, as I showed in the previous lecture. But the belief that the Darwinian theory supports the atheistic and materialistic view of nature, although it is not actually the reason for which men like Hæckel and Vogt accept the theory, is yet

2

1 "We philosophers and critical theologians," says Strauss (see Der Alte und der neue Glaube, p. 176), "talked in vain when we decreed that miracles should disappear. Our assertions had no effect because we could find nothing to replace them, no natural force which could come in where miracles had hitherto seemed to be necessary. Darwin has found this natural force, this action of nature. He has opened the door through which a happier posterity will be able to drive out miracles for ever. Every one who knows all that depends on miracles will look on him as one of the greatest benefactors of the human race."

* In the Lehrbuch der Geologie (1854), Vogt defends the theory of the immutability of species. In the notes to his translation of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1858) he overwhelms the supporters of the theory of spontaneous generation and transmutation of species with the most withering sarcasm. In the first volume of the Vorlesungen, p. 16, he says that he "cannot accept all the conclusions of the Darwinian theory," but that he is "not disinclined to support it as far as the more nearly related types are concerned." In the second volume of the same work, p. 255, he makes this reservation only, he thinks that the first cells from which the organisms were developed must have possessed different forms, must have been differently constructed, and must have had different powers of development; in everything else he is a true Darwinian. I quote the following passage from Ausland, 1867, p. 704: "Vogt belongs to the class of quarrelsome savants; he makes a vicious attack on any of his colleagues who dares to adapt scientific research to