40 



which, as less obvious, have attracted less general 

 attention. Accordingly, by the observations, or, 

 as it may perhaps be thought, by the ingenuity 

 of some recent Naturalists, an analogy, more or 

 less strict, has been detected between several soft 

 organs, which have at first view no manner of 

 resemblance, but which, nevertheless, are pre- 

 sumed to be only rough copies of each other, 

 both being formed, as it were, upon the same 

 nucleus, and differing only in certain almost 

 accidental particulars. In this view of the mat- 

 ter almost every organ in the upper part of the 

 body is presumed to have its fellow among those 

 of the lower, and almost every organ on the an- 

 terior part, its fellow among those of the posterior. 

 Undoubtedly there may be something, at first 

 view, very forced and fanciful in these specula- 

 tions ; and the science of unity of organization, 

 if there really be matter for any such science 

 that is to say, if there really exist any discover- 

 able laws which regulate the formation of these 

 organs is, it must be acknowledged, still in its 

 infancy. That there must exist such laws is 

 unquestionable the only question is, whether 

 they are such as philosophy can find out ; and 

 perhaps we have no more right to deny at pre- 

 sent that it may do so, than we should have had 

 some few years ago to deny that the definite pro- 

 portions, in which elementary bodies unite che- 

 mically to form compounds, could ever be ascer- 

 tained. The atomic doctrine in chemistry was, 

 only a very short time since, in as little repute 



