2 THE ART OF MORPHOLOGY 



partly also with fanciful abstractions culled from 

 the contemplation of concrete phenomena, but 

 quite distinct from the soul of mankind, although 

 dependent for its existence upon the human 

 understanding. 



Human life is guarded and controlled by laws, 

 the principles and spirit of which have been 

 evolved out of chaos by the mind of man 

 stimulated thereto by the necessities of the 

 fundamental claims of property, of exogamy, 

 and of fear. The existence of non-human and 

 undomesticated organisms is governed by 

 natural laws which regard not individuals except 

 in so far as they are subservient to the needs 

 of the race to which they belong. In civilisation 

 the individual is sacred and inviolable, but in 

 nature obviously at a discount. 



The geological record, made up as it is of 

 organic remains preserved in a more or less 

 fragmentary condition, must always continue to 

 be incomplete precisely in regard to those 

 organisms about whose past history information 

 would be peculiarly acceptable, namely, the soft- 

 bodied animals ; but imperfect though it be, it 

 suffices to show, what the historical record of 

 seven thousand years fails to prove, that there 

 is a specific as well as an individual longevity ; 

 and that when the form manifested by a given 

 species, the resultant of a particular combination 

 of heritable characters, becomes antiquated and 



