[342] For instance, Lucretius:—
"Is tibi nunc animus quali sit corpore et unde constiterit pergam rationem reddere dictis. Principio esse aio persubtilem atque minutis perquam corporibus factum constare."
—De Rerum Natura, iii., vv. 177-80.
[343] Contrast Treviranus—"In every living being there exists a capability of an endless variety of form-assumption; each possesses the power to adapt its organisation to the changes of the outer world, and it is this power, put into action by the change of the universe, that has raised the simple zoophytes of the primitive world to continually higher stages of organisation, and has introduced a countless variety of species into animate Nature." Quoted by Haeckel in History of Creation, i., p. 93, 1876.
[344] There is no evidence that he was influenced by Erasmus Darwin, who forestalled his evolution theory, and was indeed more aware of its vitalistic implications. See S. Butler, Evolution, Old and New, London, 1879, for an excellent account of Erasmus Darwin.
[345] As did also Lyell in his Principles of Geology, 1830.
[346] K. E. von Baer, Reden, i., p. 37, Petrograd, 1864.
[347] Rádl, loc. cit., i., p. 296.
[348] Reprinted in his Reden, i., 1864.
[349] See Huxley's criticism of it in a Royal Institution lecture of 1851, republished in Sci. Mem., i., pp. 300-4. On its relation to Haeckel's biogenetic law, see below, p. [255].