THE MICROSCOPE. 353 



jectured, and to have delivered matters of fact without adornment, it 

 would never have come to pass that LinnaBUS himself, and his school 

 after him — a school of so much influence and for years exclusively 

 dominant in descriptive natural history — should have put the micro- 

 scope, so to speak, under the han, and have looked with indifference 

 or scorn on the painstaking labors of inquirers who employed that 

 instrument. It may be some offset to this, that, in later times, mi- 

 croscopists have been by no means backward in repaying to non-micro- 

 scopists this disparaging estimate with interest. The propensity to 

 piece out the chain of observed facts by conjectures is too deeply 

 grounded in human nature not to operate strongly in a department 

 where but few and isolated laborers were to be found — so few, that the 

 most effective restraint, the objections of rival cotemporary inquirers, 

 was almost wholly wanting. Even the earliest leaders and guides 

 could not keep themselves free from sophistications of this kind. To 

 give but one example : Leuwenhoek asserted, in the most positive 

 manner, that the corpuscles of the blood, (whose real organization as 

 somewhat flattened globular cellules is clear at the first glance with 

 our present instruments,) are each of them composed of six spherical 

 polygons, made so by reciprocal pressure on their touching sides ; and 

 that each of these again consists of six similarly shaped smaller spheres, 

 and so on to infinitude. This view has not only been set in the clearest 

 light by frequent republication, but a certain English writer has drawn 

 it out in still greater detail as one of the most striking proofs of the 

 infinitely divisible constitution of organized bodies. Such fallacies 

 were once long lived. But since the middle of the third decenniuni 

 of our century the number of skillful microscopists has been so great 

 that nothing of the kind could possibly have' been asserted without 

 immediate contradiction. Microscopical errors, defended with the 

 utmost skill, pertinacity, and recklessness, have not in later times 

 maintained their ground for more than a few years. 



The very copiousness of the subject admonishes us to be brief when 

 we speak of the effect of the microscope on the development of the 

 descriptive natural sciences. The microscope opened to us, not less 

 than the telescope, a new world, and every improvement has permitted 

 us to push further back the limitary boundaries of our knowledge. 

 Still more than for an acquaintance with a countless number of animal 

 and vegetable existences, which had before lain beyond the bounds of 

 our sensible perception, are we indebted to the microscope for the dis- 

 closures which it makes of the exquisite internal structure of living 

 beings and unorganized bodies. Yet must we not rate too highly the 

 knowledge thus obtained : it is more an extension in breadth than in 

 depth. The instrument has put it in our power to perceive with the 

 senses a multitude of heretofore hidden phenomena which accompany 

 organic existence. But these experiences have only indirectly and 

 but little advanced us in a knowledge of the primitive forces which 

 determine the conditions of organization and of life. Towards this goal 

 of physical research, the assignment of the complicated play of the 

 constructive and destructive forces of nature to their several factors 

 which refuse all further* investigation, it advances us a little way only, 



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