SKELETON. 



623 



Grant, and others, still does it remain as an 

 open arena of inquiry, courting the votary of 

 truth to enter there and allure her from her se- 

 cret covert. All that has been written has not 

 fixed the Protean interpretation of this law 

 which governs the developement of vertebrated 

 skeletons. Since, therefore, this theme (upon 

 which so many great inquirers have assayed 

 interpretations which conflict with each other, 

 and in the struggle lose the clue of truth), 

 even to this hour fails of the culminating idea, 

 and is by so much imperfect, of what avail 

 would it be to the reader or myself were I to 

 discuss the merits of the various opinions such 

 as they stand? Rather than dispute about 

 opinions, I shall turn to the facts themselves, 

 upon which those opinions have been grounded, 

 and engage at once in the comparison of facts 

 as facts independent of all opinion respecting 

 them, and unmindful of the names * by which 

 they are liable to be mistaken for what they 

 are not. 



Under the abstract term skeleton, I shall 

 take a general survey of the whole subject of 

 comparative osteology ; and if the reader 

 chooses to call this survey " transcendental," 

 I shall endeavour to show that it shall not be 

 visionary. My argument shall set out from a 

 first proposition, through a successional en- 

 chainment of propositions ; and in the matter 

 of all the propositions taken collectively, I 

 shall body forth an interpretation hitherto un- 

 known in anatomical science. The facts and 

 their proper interpretation may be fairly 

 termed the body and soul of truth, and such 

 a truth is a compound of the actual and the in- 

 tellectual. The facts themselves give evidence 

 to all observers of the truth of " unity in 

 variety," but it is by inductive reasoning that 

 the intellect is to interpret the law, the poten- 

 tial agency, by which the same facts are at the 

 same time uniform and yet various. 



The object which I shall keep in view while 

 constructing my comparisons, is to demonstrate 

 the figure of unity, and give interpretation to 

 the figures of variety which are sprung of it. 

 To this end I shall prove, 



1st. That all the osseous skeletal forms are 

 quantitatively unequal things. 



parative anatomists of the German and French 

 schools. To this work, and the principle which the 

 author endeavours to establish, I shall frequently 

 refer ; and believing (as all who shall study that 

 work must believe) that the meritorious object of 

 its distinguished author is to give creation to a 

 great truth in science, at the same time that he is 

 not unwilling to give ear to all counter-argument 

 rationally advanced, I shall therefore not hesitate 

 to question the principle set forward in the work, as 

 freely as shall serve my own purpose, which holds 

 the like object in view. In whatever points, there- 

 fore, I may take objection to the author's reading, 

 and in doing so may appear too rash to question so 

 great and philosophical an authority, it is the cause 

 which must be my excuse. 



* " This, if we rightly consider and confine not our 

 thoughts and abstract ideas to names, as if there were 

 or could be no other sorts of things than what 

 known names had already determined and, as it 

 were, set out, we should think of things with greater 

 freedom and less confusion than perhaps we do." 

 Locke, Reality of Knowledge. 



2d. That they are the unequal quantities of 

 a greater or archetypal form *, a unity which 

 has undergone such an infinitely graduated 

 metamorphosis of its parts as to yield these 

 unequal skeletal forms. 



3d. That the law of formation is one of 

 degradation of an archetypal uniform original. 



4th. That these unequal skeletal forms con- 

 stitute the species or varieties of the unity of 

 the archetype. 



5th. That the whole or archetypal form of 

 which these unequal skeletal figures are the 

 parts, is the only absolutely uniform skeletal 

 series. 



6th. That nomenclature and all modes of 

 classification, according to specific distinct- 

 nesses, have no real meaning apart from the 

 consideration of this law of an archetypal 

 uniform prime model undergoing a graduated 

 metamorphosis of its parts. That in this 

 higher law of graduated series is enveloped all 

 lesser laws of classes, orders, genera, species, 

 and individuals, which, whatever be the 

 amount of their distinctive characters, do one 

 and all point to a unity of type more or less. 



With this purpose before the reader's mind, 

 I proceed to lay down my propositions as 

 preliminaries by which to pioneer a passage 

 through the blinding thicket of nomencla- 

 ture and gain the light beyond it, the light 

 of a general law f in nature. But before he 



* This term, archetype, having been first intro- 

 duced by me in the study of comparative osteology, 

 may require here a word in explanation. When I 

 first applied myself to the study of the law of 

 " unity in variety " which presides over the de- 

 velopment of vertebrated skeletons, there appeared 

 to be such a shadowy and ill-defined meaning in 

 the term unity in variety, and the facts of form 

 themselves presented in such a mysterious condition 

 of enchained analogous characters, and at the same 

 time gave such unmistakeable evidences of an en- 

 chained specific diversity, the latter encountering the 

 former condition at every step of inquiry, and neither 

 the differences nor the analogies (while contem- 

 plated as such under the same regard) holding forth 

 to me an}' promise of an end to labour and research, 

 that I at length resolved to know (in addition to the 

 self-evident analogy which the facts manifested) 

 whether or not the deferential properties were 

 mainly owing to some law which degraded or pro- 

 portioned the lesser and special forms from some 

 treater or whole form some integer or full skeletal 

 gure which might be seen as containing in its own 

 quantitative character the sum of all known varie- 

 ties or species. The comparative method which I 

 adopted to define the existence of such a figure 

 realised my expectation, as I shall presently show, 

 and to this figure I gave the name archetype. 



In a paper " On Anatomical Nomenclature," ad- 

 dressed to Professors Owen and Grant, published in 

 a number of the Lancet, March, 14. 1846, 1 have 

 spoken of the figure of an archetype skeleton. 



About the same time that I since published my 

 work on " Comparative Osteology and the Arche- 

 type Skeleton," bearing date 1847, 1 felt gratified to 

 see that the learned Professor Owen sanctioned the 

 name archetype, and gave it the weight and interest 

 of his philosophical researches. See his work, en- 

 titled " The Archetype and Homologies of the Ver- 

 tebrate Skeleton," published 1848, being a second 

 edition of his work bearing the same title, published 

 1847. 



f " Les lois, dans la signification la plus e'tendue, 

 sont les rapports ne'cessaires qui de'rivent de la 



