MILNE-EDWARDS 197 



owes to Cuvier ; " the further I advance in the study of the 

 sciences which he cultivated with so sure a hand," he writes 

 in 1867, "the more I venerate him." 



Milne-Edwards frankly takes up the teleological stand- 

 point, and interprets organic forms on the assumption that 

 they are purposive and rationally constructed. " To arrive 

 at an understanding of the harmony of the organic creation," 

 he writes, " it seemed to me that it would be well to accept 

 the hypothesis that Nature has gone about her work as we 

 would do ourselves according to the light of our own 

 intelligence, if it were given us to produce a similar 

 result. Comparing and studying living things as if they 

 were machines created by the industry of man, I have tried 

 to grasp the manner in which they might have been invented, 

 and the principles whose application would have led to the 

 production of such an assemblage of diversified instru- 

 ments" (p. 435). The problem is to discover the laws which 

 rule the diversity of organic forms. The first and most 

 obvious of these laws is the " law of economy," or the law of 

 unity of type. Nature, as Cuvier pointed out, has not had 

 recourse to all the possible forms and combinations of 

 organs ; she appears to work with a limited number of types 

 and to get the greatest possible diversity out of these 

 by varying the proportions of the constitutive materials 

 of structure. Within the limits of each type Nature has 

 brought about diversity by raising her creatures to different 

 degrees of perfection. This is the second law <jf organic 

 form, and it is this law that Milne-Edwards chiefly elaborates. 

 Degrees of perfection mean for him, as for Aristotle, primarily 

 degrees of perfection of function, but since structure is 

 necessarily in close relation with function, perfection of 

 function brings in its train increased perfection of organisa- 

 tion. This can only be attained by a division of labour l 



the passages which follow are taken from the Rapport of 1867, where 

 Milne-Edwards gives a complete exposition of his doctrine, sometimes in 

 the words of the original. 



1 This principle was first developed by Milne-Edwards in 1827, 

 in the Dictionnaire classique ctHist. naturelle. It was probably 

 suggested to him by his studies on the Crustacea, among which the 

 principle is so beautifully exemplified in the concentration and special- 

 isation of the appendages and the ganglionic chain. 



