Note 102 — Appendix to The Monist, Vol. II, No. 4

The passage in the Encyclopædia Britannica on Baer runs as follows:

“In his Entwickelungsgeschichte der Thiere, p. 264, he distinctly tells us that the law of growing individuality is ‘the fundamental thought which goes through all forms and degrees of animal development and all single relations. It is the same thought which collected in the cosmic space solar systems; the same which caused the weather-beaten dust on the surface of our metallic planet to spring forth living beings.’ Von Baer thus prepared the way for Mr. Spencer’s generalisation of the law of organic evolution as the law of all evolution.”