Boyal Microscopical Society. 91 



in an ex parte manner, pleased with a fitness, delighted with a 

 plan. 



There are deeper meanings than these in the vertebrate organi- 

 zation ; and as early as 1790 the great poet and morphologist, 

 Goethe, began to get some glimmerings of a gorgeous morpholo- 

 gical science unimagined by earlier observers and limited thinkers. 

 In 1807 Lorenz Oken took up, worked out in his peculiar way, 

 and went somewhat mad upon this most fascinating subject. He 

 had several disciples, and the greatest of these was our own country- 

 man, Eichard Owen. 



I could almost have wished that the '• transcendentalism " which 

 grew out of these oblique glimpses, partial and fitful, in the dawn 

 of a new era of biological science, had never reached our shores, 

 and that we had passed direct from the labours of the great " gra- 

 dationalist," Baron Cuvier, to those of the German Embryologists, 

 such as Baer, Eeichert, and Kathke. These men did indeed lay 

 a foundation, deep and wide, by their incomparable labours, for 

 a true morphological knowledge of the Vertebrata. 



Socrates was accused of corrupting the rising youth of Athens 

 by questioning the truth of received axioms, and disturbing their 

 unfinished minds with doubts. We may accuse a modern and 

 native philosopher, our English Oken, of misleading students — I 

 speak feelingly for myself — in the opposite direction, namely, by 

 dispelling wholesome doubts by interpreting all the hard sentences 

 of Nature for them, and by holding before their charmed vision an 

 ArclietijiMl Idea, instead of setting them to work at the various 

 types, with scalpel, and lens, and microscope. 



The inductions of this anatomist were made from particulars 

 far too few on which to build so stupendous a theory ; and mean- 

 time, the whole life-history of no single type had been worked 

 out. 



The facts all fitted, and fitted beautifully ; a'reason was given for 

 everything ; and two laws governed the creation of all the modifi- 

 cations of the Exemplar, namely, homology and teleology; when 

 homology failed, then teleology came to the rescue. 



In speaking of this justly-discarded method of morphological 

 research, I am reminded of the words of Bacon in his " Advance- 

 ment of Science," where he speaks of the " Invention of Sciences." 



" The induction which the logicians speak of, and which seemeth 

 familiar with Plato (whereby the principles of sciences may be pre- 

 tended to be invented, and so the middle propositions by derivation 

 from the principles), their form of induction, I say, is utterly vicious 

 and incompetent : wherein their error is the fouler because it is the 

 duty of Art to perfect and exalt Nature ; but they, contrariwise, have 

 wronged, abused, and traduced Nature. For he that shall attentively 

 observe how the mind doth gather this excellent dew of knowledge, 



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