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And Erasmus Darwin was by no means its only apostle. It was in the air then. A German biologist named Treviranus, whose book was published in 1802, wrote, 'In every living being there exists a capacity for endless diversity of form.
Looking back at the state of knowledge at that time, I really do not see that any other conclusion was justifiable. In those days I had never even heard of Treviranus' 'Biologie. However, I had studied Lamarck attentively and I had read the 'Vestiges' with due care; but neither of them afforded me any good ground for changing my negative and critical attitude.
Von Mohl called attention to the fact that this motion of the cell contents had been observed as long ago as 1774 by Bonaventura Corti, and rediscovered in 1807 by Treviranus, and that these observers had described the phenomenon under the "most unsuitable name of 'rotation of the cell sap." Von Mohl recognized that the streaming substance was something quite different from sap.
Field of Norwich, with a disquisition, in which he endeavoured to prove that, from a philological point of view, neither Treviranus nor Lamarck had any right to coin this new word "Biology" for their purpose; that, in fact, the Greek word "Bios" had relation only to human life and human affairs, and that a different word was employed by the Greeks when they wished to speak of the life of animals and plants.
It was now for the first time that a true general anatomy became possible. As early as 1816 Treviranus had attempted to resolve the tissues, of which Bichat had admitted no less than twenty-one, into their simple microscopic elements. How could such an attempt succeed, Henle well asks, at a time when the most extensively diffused of all the tissues, the areolar, was not at all understood?
In fact, I may say there were three men to whom this idea occurred contemporaneously, although there were but two who carried it into effect, and only one who worked it out completely. The persons to whom I refer were the eminent physiologist Bichat, and the great naturalist Lamarck, in France; and a distinguished German, Treviranus.
About the same time, it occurred to Treviranus, that all those sciences which deal with living matter are essentially and fundamentally one, and ought to be treated as a whole; and, in the year 1802, he published the first volume of what he also called "Biologie." Treviranus's great merit lies in this, that he worked out his idea, and wrote the very remarkable book to which I refer.
For many years it was the fashion to speak of Lamarck with ridicule, while Treviranus was altogether ignored. Nevertheless, the work had been done. Darwin and Mr. Wallace published their "Theory of Natural Selection."
It was now for the first time that a true general anatomy became possible. As early as 1816 Treviranus had attempted to resolve the tissues, of which Bichat had admitted no less than twenty-one, into their simple microscopic elements. How could such an attempt succeed, Henle well asks, at a time when the most extensively diffused of all the tissues, the areolar, was not at all understood?
Moreover, whatever the value of Goethe's labours in that field, they were not published before 1820, long after evolutionism had taken a new departure from the works of Treviranus and Lamarck the first of its advocates who were equipped for their task with the needful large and accurate knowledge of the phenomena of life, as a whole.
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