270 LESSONS FKOM NATUEE. [CHAP. VIIT. 



denying that the study of embryology is of great importance, 

 that the investigation as to &quot; how things become &quot; is a most 

 interesting and valuable inquiry ; but I deny that it is 

 all-important.* Aristotle declares the essence of a thing to 

 be &quot; what it is to be,&quot; and the outcome of development is, 

 to our mind, the important matter. If the apes of the 

 old world and of the new have descended from radically 

 different stocks, are they on that account not to be classed 

 together as apes? If it turns out that birds have come, 

 not from one but several distinct reptilian sources, are 

 they not all as much &quot; birds &quot; for all such divergence in 



origin ? 



My view as to each organism is, that it is, dynamically 

 considered, a single form or force, which the human mind 

 is unable to thoroughly comprehend and appreciate. Partial 

 apprehensions of it are to be obtained by different modes of 

 study and contemplation one such mode being the study 

 of the development of such organism. But a synthesis of all 

 our modes of study is the necessary preliminary to our ob 

 taining the least imperfect apprehension which is possible 

 for us of any animal or plant. We cannot grasp it in its 

 totality and unity in its essence we can only comprehend 



* The wide-spread tendency now existing to sacrifice other and more im 

 portant considerations, to considerations as to origin, is noted by Mr. Morley, 

 in his work on Compromise, 1874. He tells us (p. 23) : &quot; Curiosity with 

 reference to origin?, is for various reasons the most marked element among 

 modern scientific tendencies Character is considered less with refer 

 ence to its absolute qualities, than as an interesting scene, strewn with 

 scattered rudiments, survivals, inherited predispositions. Opinions are 

 counted rather as phenomena to be explained than as matters of truth or 

 falsehood. Of usages we are beginning, first of all, to think where they came 

 from, and secondarily, whether they are the most fitting and convenient that 

 men could be got to accept. In the last century, men asked of a belief or a 

 story, Is it true ? We now ask, How did men come to take it for true ? In 

 short, the relations among social phenomena which now engage most atten 

 tion, are relations of original source, rather than those of actual consistency 

 in theory, and actual fitness in practice. The devotees of the current method 

 are more concerned with the pedigree and genealogical connections of an idea, 

 than with its own proper goodness or badness, its strength or its weakness.&quot; 

 The author goes on to show, from his point of view, some of the evils attendant 

 on this method, such as &quot; its tendency, if uncorrected, to make men shrink 

 from importing anything like absolute quality into their propositions,&quot; and 

 &quot;to place individual robustness and initiative in the light of superfluities 

 with which a world that goes by evolution can very well dispense.&quot; 



