UNIFORMITIES EARLY PERCEIVED. 14:3 



rature, is a phenomenon that is simple, concrete, and of 

 much personal concern. But it is neither so frequent as 

 those which we see are earliest generalized, nor is the pre 

 sence of the antecedent so manifest. Though in all but 

 tropical climates, mid-winter displays the relation between 

 cold and freezing with tolerable constancy ; yet, during the 

 spring and autumn, the occasional appearance of ice in the 

 mornings has no very obvious connexion with coldness of 

 the weather. Sensation being so inaccurate a measure, it is 

 not possible for the savage to experience the definite relation 

 between a temperature of 32 and the congealing of water ; 

 and hence the long continued belief in personal agency. 

 Similarly, but still more clearly, with the winds. The ab 

 sence of regularity and the inconspicuousness of the ante 

 cedents, allowed the mythological explanation to survive for 

 a great period. 



During the era in which the uniformity of many quite 

 simple inorganic relations was still unrecognized, certain 

 organic relations, intrinsically very complex and special, 

 were generalized. The constant coexistence of feathers and 

 a beak, of four legs with an internal bony framework, are 

 facts which were, and are, familiar to every savage. Did a 

 savage find a bird with teeth, or a mammal clothed with 

 feathers, he would be as much surprised as an instructed 

 naturalist. Now these uniformities of organic structure thus 

 early perceived, are of exactly the same kind as those more 

 numerous ones later established by biology. The constant 

 coexistence of mammary glands with two occipital condyles 

 to the skull, of vertebrae with teeth lodged in sockets, of 

 frontal horns with the habit of rumination, are generaliza 

 tions as purely empirical as those known to the aboriginal 

 hunter. The botanist cannot in the least understand the 

 complex relation between papilionaceous flowers and seeds 

 borne in flattened pods : he knows these and like connexions 

 simply in the same way that the barbarian knows the con- 



