1856.] as Knowledge, DisciplinCy and Power. 189 



we shall find that they open up fields of thought unsurpassable in 

 interest and grandeur. For instance, morphology demonstrates that 

 the innumerable varieties of the forms of living beings are modelled 

 upon a very small number of common plans or types. (" Haupt- 

 Typen^* of Von Bar, whose idea and term are merely paraphrased 

 by " archetype," common plan, &c.) In the animal world we find 

 only five of these common plans, that of the Protozoa^ of the Ccelen- 

 terata^ of the Mollusca, of the Annulosa, and of the Vertehrata. 

 Not only are all animals existing in the present creation organized 

 according to one of these five plans ; but palaeontology tends to 

 show that in the myriads of past ages of which the earth's crust con- 

 tains the records, no other plan of animal form made its appearance 

 on our planet. A marvellous fact, and one which seems to present 

 no small obstacle in the way of the notion of the possibly fortuitous 

 development of animal life. 



Not merely does the study of morphology lead us into the depths 

 of past time, but it obliges us to gaze into that greater abyss which 

 lies between the human mind and that mind of which the universe 

 is but a thought and an expression. For man, looking from the 

 heights of science into the surrounding universe, is as a traveller 

 who has ascended the Brocken and sees, in the clouds, a v^st image, 

 dim and awful, and yet in its essential lineaments resembling him- 

 self. In the words of the only poet of our day who has fused true 

 science into song, the philosopher, looking into Nature, 



" Sees his shadow glory -crowned, 

 He sees himself in all he sees." 



Tennyson's '^In Memoriam." 



The mathematician discovers in the universe a " Divine 

 Geometry ;"the physicist and the chemist every where find that the 

 operations of nature may be expressed in terms of the human intellect ; 

 and, in like manner, among living beings, the naturalist discovers 

 that their " vital *' processes are not performed by the gift of powers 

 and faculties entirely peculiar and irrespective of those which are 

 met with in the physical world ; but that they are built up and their 

 parts adapted together, in a manner which forcibly reminds us of the 

 mode in which a human artificer builds up a complex piece of mechan- 

 ism, by skilfully combining the simple powers and forces of the matter 

 around him. The numberless facts which illustrate this truth are 

 familiar to all, through the works of Paley and the natural theolo- 

 gians, whose arguments may be summed up thus — that the structure 

 of living beings is, in the main, such as would result from the benevo- 

 lent operation, under the conditions of the physical world, of an 

 intelligence similar in kind, however superior in degree, to our own. 

 Granting the validity of the premises, that from the similarity of 

 effects we may argue to a similarity of cause, does natural history 

 allow our conclusions to rest here ? Is this utilitarian adaptation to 

 a benevolent purpose, the chief or even the leading feature of that 

 great shadow, or, we should more rightly say, of that vast arche- 



