THE PROBLEMS OF MORPHOLOGY. 5 



questions concerning the mode in which these parts become 

 modified.* 



This is not obviously a morphological question. But an 

 illustration or two will make it manifest that fundamental 

 differences may be produced between aggregates by differences 

 in the degrees of composition of the increments : the ultimate 

 units of the increments being the same. Thus an accumula- 

 tion of things of a given kind may be made by adding one at 

 a time. Or the things may be tied up into bundles of ten, 

 and the tens placed together. Or the tens may be united 

 into hundreds, and a pile of hundreds formed. Such unlike- 

 nesses in the structures of masses are habitually seen in our 

 mercantile transactions. Articles which the consumer re- 

 cognizes as single, the retailer keeps wrapped up in dozens, 

 the wholesaler sends in gross, and the manufacturer supplies 

 in packages of a hundred gross. That is, they severally in- 

 crease their stocks by units of simple, of compound, and of 

 doubly-compound kinds. Similarly result those differences of 

 morphological composition which we have first to consider. 

 An organism consists of units. These units may be aggre- 

 gated into a mass by the addition of unit to unit. Or they 

 may be united into groups, and the groups joined together. 

 Or these groups of groups may be so combined as to form a 

 doubly-compound aggregate. Hence there arises respecting 

 each organic form the question is its composition of the 

 first, second, third, or fourth order? does it exhibit units of 

 a singly-compounded kind only, or are these consolidated 

 into units of a doubly-compounded kind, or a triply-com- 

 pounded kind? And if it displays double or triple composi- 



* It seems needful here to say, that allusion is made in this paragraph to a 

 proposition respecting the ultimate natures of Evolution and Dissolution, 

 which is contained in an essay on The Classification of tJie Sciences, pub- 

 lished in March, 1864. When the opportunity comes, I hope to make the 

 definition there arrived at, the basis of a re-organization of the second part of 

 First Principles: giving to that work a higher development, and a greater 

 cohesion, than it at present possesses. [The intention here indicated was 

 duly carried out in 1867.] 



