time: the refreshing river 



us how a Chick is formed in the Egge, or how the seminal 

 principles of mint, pompions, and other vegetables, can fashion 

 Water into various plants, each of them endow'd with its peculiar 

 and determinate shape and with diverse specifick and discrimin- 

 ating Qualities? How does this hypothesis shew us, how much 

 Salt, how much Sulphur, how much Mercur}^ must be taken to 

 make a Chick or Pompion ? and if we know that, what principle 

 is it, that manages these ingredients and contrives, for instance, 

 such liquors as the White and Yolke of an Egge in such a variety 

 of textures as is requisite to fashion the Bones, Arteries, Veines, 

 Nerves, Tendons, Feathers, Blood and other parts of a Chick; 

 and not only to fashion each Limbe, but to connect them alto- 

 gether, after that manner which is most congruous to the 

 perfection of the Animal which is to consist of them? For to 

 say that some more fine and subtile part of either or all the 

 Hypostatical Principles is the Director in all the business and the 

 Architect of all this elaborate structure, is to give one occasion 

 to demand again, what proportion and way of mixture of the 

 Tria Prima afforded this Architectonick Spirit, and what Agent 

 made so skilful and happy a mixture ?'* 



Boyle's instance of the magnetic needle pointing nearly, not 

 exactly, at the north, and his use of the expressions "how much," 

 *'how many," "proportion," "way of mixture," indicate that he was 

 moving towards a quantitative chemistry, and by express implication 

 a quantitative embryology. Elsewhere he says that he thinks the 

 Tria Prima will hardly explain a tenth part of the phenomena which 

 the "Leucippian" or atomistic hypothesis is competent to deal with. 

 Thus, although Boyle made few experiments or observations on 

 embryos, he occupies a very important position in the history of 

 embryology. 



Allied to this creation of concepts, and the choice of one of them 

 to apply, we find that the mentality of the workers of the past has 

 often been particularly different with regard to a quality which can 

 only be called Audacity. Probably Aristotle's greatest claim to our 

 respect is that alone of his contemporaries and predecessors he had 

 the audacity to suggest that animal form was not limitlessly manifold 

 or infinite in its manifestations, but that given industry and intelligence, 

 a classification was possible. This alone marks him out above all 

 subsequent biologists. On a smaller scale, we find the same mental 



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