XVI PREFACE. 



leading questions that a child would ask respecting structure or 

 function, were forgotten, or postponed indefinitely. The connection 

 of the science with our living sympathies, which was never strong, 

 had ceased altogether. The function of its hierophants, to enlighten 

 the ignorant, had become impracticable, for want of vitality and 

 attractiveness in their knowledge. These were signs that its king- 

 dom was moved from the midst of it, and was about to be given to 

 another. Be it observed, however, that we do not blame the exist- 

 ing sciences for what they are not; our task lies only in recording 

 that they have had their three sufficient warnings. Their state is 

 like that of us all — birth, growth, and decline ; and like us in due 

 time they are to be supplanted by their sons, when the world's 

 business requires further workmen. For the sciences become im- 

 mortal in their generations; solid in the general subordination of 

 the past to the present ; and living in the perpetual aspiration and 

 appeal from the present to the future. 



I know that even the chemistry is all right in its own way ; and 

 I cannot help admiring the thoroughness of the Liebigs, who after 

 having analyzed the rest of things, put men and women into the 

 retorts, and with pen and ink ready, write down so much dirty 

 water and foetid oil, and so many ounces of scientific dust, as the 

 future state which comes over. This is positive fact, if not for the 

 physiologists, at least for the candle makers. I ask nothing more 

 than that it shall be in its place. 



And who can quarrel with the jnicroscopists ? When Leeuwen- 

 hoek, in the seventeenth century, determined that everything that 

 was too little to be seen, was his empire, he really laid his hands 

 upon the whole of things, in a certain small sense. And whenever 

 our great duties and rights are tolerably well fulfilled, little things 

 will be intellectually and morally magnified into a new importance. 

 Ultimate structure will then coincide with primary structure. But 

 until then, the microscope is before its time in physiology, and 

 must wait upon lower callings. While the reasons of minute forms 

 are so totally unseen, it is their prettiness chiefly, their scenic 

 charm and glow, which is of use to human eyes. I have often 

 wondered why, in the difficulties of the artists who make patterns, 

 they have not resorted to Mr. Queckett and the Microscopical 



