The blighting setback these views suffered came from the criticisms of Baron Cuvier. This genuinely remarkable man had built up the study of comparative anatomy. To him students flocked from all sides. Among these one of the most brilliant was Agassiz, the Swiss naturalist, who later came to this country, filled with Cuvier's ideas. This great teacher believed that species are fixed. He knew better than any man of his times the wonderful similarity in structure between animals of a given class. He attributed this not to any real blood relationship between the animals. They were alike because they had been made by the same Creator. This great Artificer worked along four main lines, and hence animals could be divided into four groups. Many who have studied text books on zooelogy written in this country by Agassiz and his followers will remember the four classes--Radiates, Articulates, Mollusks, and Vertebrates. Agassiz was such a wonderful teacher and so genial and so lovable a man that his opposition to evolution held back the advance of the Darwinian idea in America as Cuvier's influence had held back the Lamarckian idea in Europe. For the brilliant Cuvier simply laughed before his students at each "new folly" of Buffon and of Lamarck. Under this ridicule the influence of both men withered and died. A little later the great poet, Goethe, turned his attention to the problem of evolution, giving an interesting account of the metamorphoses of plants. He declared, also, that the human skull is a continuation of the backbones of the neck, and that these bones have been transformed into the present skull. But his great genius as a poet drew his attention into other fields. Haeckel points out that if Goethe had known Lamarck's work his genius would have gained for the "Philosophie Zooelogique" the interest and respect of the reading world. But Cuvier laughed it out of court, and only in comparatively modern times, since Darwin's work has set the world thinking anew, is Lamarck's career recognized at its true value. Lamarck should have been the founder of the evolution theory. But the time was not quite ripe, and it remained for Charles Darwin to announce his idea, sustained and fortified by years of careful observation and thoughtful reflection. CHAPTER II DARWIN AND WALLACE