BASIS OF THE TBANSCENDENTAL. 427 



and head included ; of the organic world, vertebrate and in- 

 vertebrate. Carried further, it possesses the form of the 

 primitive cell ; of the sphere ; of the universe. 



" Now look at this bone in man it appears simple, but it is 

 not so. Originally, that is, in the young, composed of many 

 distinct portions, which afterwards unite with each other, but 

 which remaining distinct in many animals, as in fishes, proves 

 to us, that throughout the whole range of animals so formed, 

 the vertebras do not really differ so much from each other as 

 might at first appear: that, in fact, the elements forming 

 them seem the same almost numerically, giving rise to the 

 well grounded belief, that, in the embryo, the elements of the 

 skeleton may be, after all, the same in every animal. From 

 man to the whale, all is alike ; one theory explains all ; one 

 idea or plan pervades all. 



" Let us trace this chain of bones upwards and downwards ; 

 see how downwards (coccygeal vertebrae) certain elements 

 cease to be developed, or do not grow : still the plan is the 

 same ; identical ; analogous, as regards the individual, that is, 

 repeated ; homologous or identical, as regards one animal 

 compared with another. Look to this section of the skeleton, 

 called the head ; the bones seem widely different from the 

 vertebrae ; but it is not so. They are merely vertebrae, re- 

 peated, upon a larger scale as may be required : a chain of 

 vertebrae form, then, the head or cranium. These great 

 truths we owe exclusively to the illustrious South German 

 and Slavonian schools of transcendental anatomy ; to Oken and 

 Spix, Autenrieth, Frank, Goethe, and a host of others. * * * 



" A vertebra must have a type ; that is, a plan, sufficiently 

 comprehensive to include all forms of vertebrae. Now where 

 is this to be found ? Is it an ideal type not yet discovered ? 

 Or is it to be found in any extinct or living animal ? I 

 apprehend that it may or it may not have been found, but 

 this in no way interferes with the principle that there must 

 , be a type laid down by nature ; eternal ; equal to all mani- 

 festations of form, extinct or living, or to come. 



" But the discovery of such a type could only be made were 

 the anatomy of all animals that ever lived known to us; 

 perhaps not even then, for the future must be wrapt up in 

 the past : and what seems to us now a mere speck of bone, a 

 nucleus, a point unimportant, nay, scarcely discernible, may, 

 in a future order of things, become an all-important element. 

 As thus : 



" If birds did not exist, we could scarcely conceive the high 



