ON THE PBOGEESS OF ANATOMY. 367 



who have derived both pleasure and instruction from the use 

 of the microscope, and who have had it in my hands almost 

 daily since the commencement of my anatomical studies 

 sixteen years ago, should entertain or promote any prejudice 

 against that instrument. It is against the abuse, not the use, 

 of it which I warn you. I beg of you not to employ it, or 

 be induced by any one to do so, until you have to a certain 

 extent mastered the details of descriptive human anatomy. 

 That is the grammar of our science — the modeller of our 

 anatomical ideas. It is by the study of it that we acquire 

 the habit of thinking as anatomists, and drawing as anatomists. 

 As soon would the astronomer place the telescope in the hands 

 of his pupil, and request him to interpret the sinuous lines by 

 which the orbits of the planets are projected on the apparent 

 surface of the hollow sphere, before he has acquired steady 

 ideas of astronomical forms and motions by preparatory studies, 

 as would the judicious teacher of anatomy suggest the exami- 

 nation of objects by the microscope before strict anatomical 

 ideas of form and relation had been acquired by the study of 

 the bones, muscles, and blood-vessels. The child at birth 

 does not, as you are aware, see things as they really are in 

 space ; the full use of his eyes he only gains after a series of 

 instinctive experiments made by means of his other senses. 

 It is thus that lie comes at last to use, without conscious 

 '■H'oit, organs which in themselves are no mere physical 

 insl ruments. Now, the telescope and the microscorje are addi- 

 tional eyes, and before they can be aright employed on the 

 objects with which the astronomer and anatomist have to do, 

 a supplementary education must be submitted to (an educa- 

 tion the more irksome that the other senses cannot be employed 

 to interpret the revelations of the new instrument) in order 

 thai the minute structures on the one hand ami the heavenly 

 bodies on the other may be correctly examined. The only 

 mode of procedure is, in l lie one case, to form astronomical ideas 

 VOL. i. 2 l: 



