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.—Aristotle.—His Doctrine of
Spontaneous Generation.—The Meaning of
Nature-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 Reinhold Treviranus.—His Monistic
Conception of Nature.—Oken.—His
Nature-philosophy.—Oken’s Theory of Protoplasm.—Oken’s
Theory of Infusoria (Cell Theory).—Oken’s Theory of
Development 72