260 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



might, and who " provided him with the subject-matter 

 of his severest as well as of his most justifiable 

 sarcasms." l 



The great extension of the morphological or struc- 

 tural view of nature into distant time and space into 

 palaeontology by Cuvier and Owen, into geography by 

 Humboldt, Eitter, and others i.e., morphology on an 

 extensive scale led to an appreciation of the labours 

 of a different class of students of nature, namely, those 

 who also on a large or a smaller scale investigated 

 the agencies which bring about and the laws which 

 govern the change of forms. I have now to mention 

 the last great contribution to the purely morphological 

 45. view, I mean the cellular theory, which tended ultimately 

 theory. in a similar direction. 



The earlier researches into the minute microscopic 

 structure of organised beings such as those of Malpighi 

 and Grew in the seventeenth century were conducted 

 by persons who took an equal interest in animal and 

 plant life. 2 But this class of research soon fell into 

 the hands of specialists, with the result that anatomy, 

 the science of animal structure, and phytotomy, that 

 of vegetable structure, were conducted on different lines 



1 Huxley, ' Life of Owen,' vol. ii. 

 p. 315. 



2 Carus (' Gesch. der Zoologie,' p. 

 395) mentions especially Malpighi 

 (1628-1694) as an exception, inas- 

 much as he conducted his researches 

 from a purely scientific interest, 

 keeping them free from extraneous 

 practical considerations. " In his 

 anatomy of plants there are laid, 

 moreover, the first foundations, 

 more firmly established by all sub- 



sequent researches, of the doctrine 

 of the composition of all organised 

 bodies out of cells, which has given 

 to the whole conception of the liv- 

 ing creation a definite starting- 

 point, and in the sequel a firm basis 

 for the genetic view." See also on 

 the same subject, and on the rela- 

 tion of structural and physiological 

 researches in the seventeenth and 

 eighteenth centuries, Sachs, ' Gesch. 

 d. Botanik,' p. 351, &c. 



