EPILOGUE. 



In the beginning of this book I said that its scope and treat- 

 ment were of so prefatory a kind that of other preface it had no 

 need ; and now, for the same reason, with no formal and elaborate 

 conclusion do I bring it to a close. The fact that I set little store 

 by certain postulates (often deemed to be fundamental), of our 

 present-day biology the reader will have discovered and I have 

 not endeavoured to conceal. But it is not for the sake of polemical 

 argument that I have written, and the doctrines which I do not 

 subscribe to I have only spoken of by the way. My task is finished 

 if I have been able to shew that a certain mathematical aspect of 

 morphology, to which as yet the morphologist gives httle heed, is 

 interwoven with his problems, complementary to his descriptive 

 task, and helpful, nay essential, to his proper study and com- 

 prehension of Form. Hie artem remumque repono. 



And while I have sought to shew the naturalist how a few 

 mathematical concepts and dynamical principles may help and 

 guide him, I have tried to shew the mathematician a field for his 

 labour, — a field which few have entered and no man has explored. 

 Here may be found homely problems, such as often tax the 

 highest skill of the mathematician, and reward his ingenuity all 

 the more for their trivial associations and outward semblance of 

 simpUcity. 



That I am no skilled mathematician I have had little need to 

 confess, but something of the use and beauty of mathematics I 

 think I am able to understand. I know that in the study of 

 material things, number, order and position are the threefold clue 

 to exact knowledge ; that these three, in the mathematician's 

 hands, furnish the "first outhnes for a sketch of the Universe"; 

 that by square and circle we are helped, hke Emile Verhaeren's 

 carpenter, to conceive " Les lois indubitables et fecondes Qui sont 

 la regie et la clarte du monde." 



For the harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and 

 Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural 



