eed that Spix got some of the ideas
published in the _Cephalogenesis_ (1815) from attending his course of
lectures in 1809. It is certainly the case that Spix published before
Geoffroy the view that the opercular bones are homologous with the
ear-ossicles, adopting, however, a different homology for the separate
bones.[163]

Some speculations seem to have been common to both schools--for
instance, the law of Meckel-Serres, the vertebral theory of the skull,
and the recognition of serial homology in the appendages of Arthropods
(Savigny, Oken). Latreille and Duges, as well as Serres, clearly show in
their theoretical views the influence of Oken and the other
transcendentalists. Geoffroy's principle of connections and law of
compensation were recognised by some at least of the Germans.

But whatever his actual historical relations may have been with the
German school, Geoffroy was vastly their superior in the matter of pure
morphology. He alone brought to clear consciousness the principles on
which a pure morphology could be based: the Germans were transcendental
philosophers first, and morphologists after.

One understands from this how J. F. Meckel, who was in some ways the
leading comparative anatomist in Germany at this time, could be at once
a transcendentalist and an opponent of Geoffroy. Meckel had a curiously
eclectic mind. A disciple of Cuvier, having studied in 1804-6 the rich
collections at the Museum in Paris, the translator of Cuvier's _Lecons
d'anatomie comparee_, he earned for himself the title of the "German
Cuvier," partly through the publication of his comprehensive textbook
(_System der vergl. Anatomie_, 5 vols.), partly by his extensive and
many-sided research work, partly by his authoritative teaching. His
_System_ shows in almost every page of its theoretical part the
influence of Cuvier; and it is through having assimilated Cuvier's
teaching as to the importance of function that Meckel combats Geoffroy's
law of connections, at least in its rigorous form. He submits that the
connections of bones and muscles must change in relation to functional
requirements. He rejects Geoffroy's theory of the vertebrate nature of
Articulates. Generally throughout his work the functional point of view
is well to the fore.

Yet at heart Meckel was a transcendentalist of the German school. His
vagaries on the subject of "homologues" leave no doubt about that, and,
in spite of Cuvier, he believed, though not very fi