succeed in establishing more firmly his theory of the common descent
of man and the other animals.

Independently of Lamarck, the older German school of natural
philosophy, especially Reinhold Treviranus, in his Biologie (1802),
and Lorentz Oken, in his Naturphilosophie (1809), turned its attention
to the problem of evolution about the end of the eighteenth and
beginning of the nineteenth century. I have described its work in my
History of Creation (chapter 4). Here I can only deal with the
brilliant genius whose evolutionary ideas are of special interest--the
greatest of German poets, Wolfgang Goethe. With his keen eye for the
beauties of nature, and his profound insight into its life, Goethe was
early attracted to the study of various natural sciences. It was the
favourite occupation of his leisure hours throughout life. He gave
particular and protracted attention to the theory of colours. But the
most valuable of his scientific studies are those which relate to that
"living, glorious, precious thing," the organism. He made profound
research into the science of structures or morphology (morphae =
forms). Here, with the aid of comparative anatomy, he obtained the
most brilliant results, and went far in advance of his time. I may
mention, in particular, his vertebral theory of the skull, his
discovery of the pineal gland in man, his system of the metamorphosis
of plants, etc. These morphological studies led Goethe on to research
into the formation and modification of organic structures which we
must count as the first germ of the science of evolution. He
approaches so near to the theory of descent that we must regard him,
after Lamarck, as one of its earliest founders. It is true that he
never formulated a complete scientific theory of evolution, but we
find a number of remarkable suggestions of it in his splendid
miscellaneous essays on morphology. Some of them are really among the