ly arranged with respect to one another,
and often constructed in a different way; that they are in Cephalopods
accompanied by several other organs which Vertebrates do not possess,
whilst the latter on their side have many organs which Cephalopods lack"
(p. 257). Geoffroy could not accept this commonsense view of the matter,
but made a fight for his transcendental theories. This was the beginning
of the famous controversy between Geoffroy and Cuvier which so excited
the interest of Goethe. It was a struggle between "comparative anatomy"
and "morphology," between the commonsense teleological view of structure
and the abstract, transcendental. Geoffroy brought forward all his
theories on the homology of the skeleton of fish with the skeleton of
higher Vertebrates, and tried to prove by them his great principle of
the unity of plan and composition; Cuvier took Geoffroy's homologies one
by one, and showed how very slight was their foundation. Cuvier was on
sure ground in insisting upon the observable diversities of structural
type, and his vast knowledge enabled him to score a decisive victory.[97]

The controversy was not, as we are sometimes told, a controversy between
a believer in evolution and an upholder of the fixity of species,
although it raised a question upon which evolution theory was to throw
some light.

In these Darwinian days Geoffroy has reaped a little posthumous glory as
an early believer in evolution. That he did believe in evolution to a
limited extent is certain; that his theory of evolution was, as it were,
a by-product of his life-work, is also certain. Geoffroy was primarily a
morphologist and a seeker after the unity hidden under the diversity of
organic form. His theory of evolution had as good as no influence upon
his morphology, for he did not to any extent interpret unity of plan as
being due to community of descent. His morphological, non-evolutionary
standpoint comes out quite clearly in several places in the _Philosophie
anatomique_. He does not derive the structure of the higher Vertebrates
from the simpler structure of the lower, but when he finds in fish a
part at the maximum of its development, he speaks of the same part,
rudimentary in the higher forms, as being, as it were, held in reserve
for use in the fish. Thus, speaking of the episternal in fish which
forms the central piece of its sternum, he says, "it is a bone that is
rudimentary in birds (one might almost add a bone that is h