36 CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT 



wliicli in the osseous fishes bears attached to it, as its ribs, 

 the bones of the scapular ring. And the cerebral segments 

 thus constructed we find represented in typical diagrams of 

 the skull, as real vertebrae. Professor Owen, in his lately 

 published treatise on " The Nature of Limbs," — a work 

 charged with valuable fact, and instinct with philosophy, — 

 figures, in his draught of the archetypal skeleton of the ver- 

 tebrata, the four vertebrae of the head, in a form as unequivo- 

 cally such as any of the vertebrae of the neck or body. 



Now, for certain purposes of generalization, I doubt not 

 that the conception ntay have its value. There are in all 

 nature and in all philosophy certain central ideas of general 

 bearing, round which, at distances less or more remote, the 

 subordinate and particular ideas arrange themselves, 



*' Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb." 



In the classifications of the naturalist, for instance, all species 

 range round some central generic idea ; all genera round some 

 central idea, to which we give the name of order ; all orders 

 round some central idea of class ; all classes round some 

 central idea of division ; and all divisions round the anterior 

 central idea which constitutes a kingdom. Sir Joshua Rey- 

 nolds forms his theory of beauty on this principle of central 

 ideas. " Every species of the animal, as well as of the vege- 

 table creation," he remarks, " may be said to have a fixed or 

 determinate form, towards which nature is continually inclin- 

 ing, like various lines terminating in a centre ; or it may be 

 compared to pendulums vibrating in different directions over 

 one central point, which they all cross, though only one of 

 their number passes through any other point." He instances, 

 in illustrating his theory, the Grecian beau ideal of the human 

 nose, as seen in the statues of the Greek deities. It formed 

 a straight line ; whereas all deformity of nose is of a convex 

 or concave character, and occasioned by either a rising above 



