is in the earth, from which all living things make their appearance, each
distinctively after its own kind, whenever environing conditions favor.
For they severally recognize these "necessary conditions" as inseparable
from all vital manifestation.

An effort has been made to show that Goethe was the great inspired prophet
of the doctrine of "Evolution," as a ceaselessly progressive
transformation of one thing into another, in the metamorphoses of plants
and animals; and Haeckel quotes this passage from him as entirely
conclusive of this point: "Thus much we should have gained (towards
solving the problem of life) that all the more perfect organic beings,
among which we include fishes, amphibians, birds, mammals (and at the head
of the latter, man), to be formed according to an archetype, [12] which
merely fluctuates more or less in its ever persistent parts, and moreover,
day by day, completes and transforms itself by means of reproduction." But
this attempt to give a poetic glorification to Haeckelism in Goethe's
speculations, and bring his commanding name into support of the evolution
theory of development, will prove utterly futile in the light of his
"archetype," and the persistency with which he concedes that nature
adheres to perfected forms.

Goethe accepts the doctrine of _vis centripeta_, beyond the influence of
which no developmental progress can be made in the way of diversifying or
variegating ideal types. In other words, he virtually fixes limits to
variability, from the outermost circumference of which reversion must
inevitably take place. His whole doctrine may be summed up generally, if
not specially, in these words: "The animal is fashioned _by_ circumstances
_to_ circumstances," as the eagle to the air and mountain top, the mole to
the loose soil in which it burrows, the seal to the water in which he
frolics, and the bat to the cave, the twilight, and the night air. We