8 INTRODUCTORY [ch. 



They are no exception to the rule that 0eo<? aei yew/jLerpel. Their 

 problems of form are in the first instance mathematical problems, 

 and their problems of growth are essentially physical problems; 

 and the morphologist is, ipso facto, a student of physical science. 



Apart from the physico-chemical problems of modern physio- 

 logy, the road of physico-mathematical or dynamical investigation 

 in morphology has had few to follow it ; but the pathway is old. 

 The way of the old Ionian physicians, of Anaxagoras*, of 

 Empedocles and his disciples in the days before Aristotle, lay 

 just by that highwayside. It was Gahleo's and BorelU's way. 

 It was little trodden for long afterwards, but once in a while 

 Swammerdam and Reaumur looked that way. And of latCT 

 years, Moseley and Meyer, Berthold, Errera and Roux have 

 been among the little band of travellers. We need not wonder 

 if the way be hard to follow, and if these wayfarers have yet 

 gathered httle. A harvest has been reaped by others, and the 

 gleaning of the grapes is slow. 



It behoves us always to remember that in physics it has taken 

 great men to discover simple things. They are very great names 

 indeed that we couple with the explanation of the path of a stone, 

 the droop of a chain, the tints of a bubble, the shadows in a cup. 

 It is but the slightest adumbration of a dynamical morphology 

 that we can hope to have, until the physicist and the mathematician 

 shall have made these problems of ours their own, or till a new 

 Boscovich shall have written for the naturalist the new Theoria 

 Philosophiae Naturalis. 



How far, even then, mathematics will suffice to describe, and 

 physics to explain, the fabric of the body no man can foresee. 

 It may be that all the laws of energy, and all the properties of 

 matter, and all the chemistry of all the colloids are as powerless 

 to explain the body as they are impotent to comprehend the 

 soul. For my part, I think it is not so. Of how it is that the 

 soul informs the body, physical science teaches me nothing: 

 consciousness is not explained to my comprehension by all the 

 nerve-paths and "neurones" of the physiologist; nor do I ask of 

 physics how goodness shines in one man's face, and evil betrays 

 itself in another. But of the construction and growth and working 

 * Whereby he incurred the reproach of Socrates, in the Phaedo. 



