79Q THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



which agnosticism repudiates than Prof. Huxley himself in his 

 purely scientific writings. In his descriptions of the growth of 

 living things, from the ovum to the finished creature, we seem to 

 be listening to a literal reading and exposition of some page out 

 of that book in which all " our members were written when as 

 yet there were none of them." It is surely remarkable that Na- 

 ture should be so full of the spirit and of the characteristic ideas 

 of Hebrew and of Christian theology. But so it is. In Prof. 

 Huxley's instructive work on the Elements of Comparative Anat- 

 omy he is rich in the use of language descriptive of the prepara- 

 tions for that which is to be. Every change that arises in the 

 mysterious egg-substance is explained, as it can only be explained, 

 by its relations with the future. Does a movement begin in the 

 formless mass, establishing a long cleft or groove ? It indicates 

 the position " of the future longitudinal axis of the body." Do 

 the lateral boundaries of this groove at one end of it " grow up 

 into plates " ? It is that this end is the end which " will become " 

 the interior region of the body, and these plates are the " dorsal 

 laminae." Do these dorsal laininse at length unite ? It is that they 

 may " inclose the future cerebro-spinal cavity." Does another por- 

 tion of the mass grow downward instead of up ? It is that it may 

 " form the vertical laminae," with a function in the future not less 

 essential.* One thing can only be understood when it is conceived 

 as " laying the foundations " of another, f A second thing can 

 only be understood as " pre-shadowing " the form and relations J 

 of a third, and so on throughout. Nor does Prof. Huxley confine 

 this great principle of interpretation to the development of the 

 individual foetus. This governing idea of referring all organic 

 growth to the work of preparation and prevision, he extends to 

 the whole history of life since it first began. He quotes with 

 approbation, and adopts, the grand generalization of John Hunter, 

 that organization is not the cause of life, but life is the cause of 

 organization. Immense consequences are involved in this con- 

 ception. Organisms are the habitations and the homes of life, 

 but life must build them before it can settle in them and take pos- 

 session. An organ is a structure for the discharge of function, 

 but it must be shaped and made before the function can be dis- 

 charged. This luminous idea sends its searching light through 

 and through the stupidities which confound between things made 

 for use and things that are said to be made by use. Use as an 

 intellectual aim must precede use as a physical cause. And so 

 the prophetic interpretation of foetal development becomes the 

 only possible interpretation of all organic growth so far as it is 

 known to us. Accordingly, Prof. Huxley interprets the whole his- 



* Pages 65, 66. f Pa S e 13 ?- t Pa ge 142 - 



