REPORT ON THE OPHIUROIDEA. 5 



animals. In the course of his development, he passes from mere organised tissue to an 

 embryonic form, and thence to the stage of a new-born animal — living free, yet devoid 

 of intelligence and incapable of locomotion. He takes many months to get beyond the 

 mental capacity of a dog, and twenty years to arrive at his full powers. The growth 

 of his body is nothing more than an accumulation of material under a special form ; and 

 it makes no difference, phdosophically, whether this accumulation has always followed its 

 present order, or has formerly followed a different order. In the first case we must 

 suppose the growth of Man always to have been what it now is ; in the second case we 

 must suppose him originally developed from one of the lower animals. To state it in a 

 different form, we may suppose that two primitive cells have always grown into a man ; 

 or else that they, for a long time, grew only as far as one of the lower animals, but at 

 length pushed on and attained the structure of man. Take what view we will, we are 

 always talking of identical material, and of its building up, tumbhng down, and rebuild- 

 ing, just as a mason, having bricks and mortar, may build a house, or a tower, or a 

 house surmounted by a tower. Whatever he builds he has but bricks and mortar, and 

 his mode of using them is only a history — the history of his construction. 



If, then, we know laws only in the form of tendencies, and matter only as a contradic- 

 tion, we ought to be modest in our assertions about the order of nature. In other words, 

 whde we may amuse ourselves by arranging a procession of species, we must be prepared 

 to see the pageant fall into confusion at any moment. 



In the descriptive part of this monograph I have tried to use simple words as often 

 as possible ; and not to add to the jargon in which zoology is now smothering. In 

 addition to a gigantic classification, to form which the dead languages have been torn 

 up and recomposed, there is an ever-growing crop of anatomical and embryological 

 terms. No callow privat docent but thinks he does good service in adding a score of 

 obscure words, to define his ephemeral theory. Doubtless he is not aware that his 

 work has two faces. First, as it regards himself, these new words of his have become 

 familiar and convenient in a subject he has long studied. Secondly, as it regards his 

 readers, not only have they never heard the new words, but have perhaps known the 

 parts referred to by other names. They must, therefore, go through three painful 

 processes : — («) Commit to memory, with dreary labour, like sawdust-swallowing, the 

 novel words, (b) Learn to what parts they apply, (c) Carefully forget the old terms. 



The result of this system has been, not a language but a jargon such as Moliere 

 would scarcely have ventured to put in the mouths of the medical faculty in his 

 Malade Imaginaire. 



The ground trouble is in the notion, prevalent among scholars, that strict consistency 

 and interdependence of words are of vast importance and to be attained coute qui coute; 

 whereas they are of very slender importance and worth no sacrifice at all. What should 



