COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



do well to start somewhat further down, and 

 note what the science is which is contained in 

 text-books or in original monographs. Viewed 

 from this standpoint, a science like biology, for 

 example, has for its subject-matter questions 

 concerning the changes undergone by starch or 

 fibrine within the stomach, the distribution of 

 cells and fibres in the tissue of the brain, the 

 relations of blood-supply to the functional ac- 

 tivity of any organ, the manner in which the 

 optic nerve is made to respond diversely to rays 

 of different refrangibility impinging upon the 

 retina, or the growth of bone from sundry 

 centres of ossification starting here and there in 

 the primitive cartilage ; or again such questions 

 as concern the generic or ordinal relationships 

 of barnacles, or bats, or elephants, the homo- 

 logies between a bird's wing and a dog's fore- 

 leg, the geographical distribution of butterflies, 

 or ferns, or pine-trees, the typical structures of 

 vertebrates or annulosa, or the kinships between 

 fossil forms of the horse and pig. In these ques- 

 tions, and a thousand others like them, we see 

 at once that we are in the special domain of 

 biology, and that our reasonings belong unmis- 

 takably to science, and not to common know- 

 ledge on the one hand, or to philosophy on the 

 other. If now, after mastering countless details 

 of this sort, we go on to inquire into the cause 

 of the bilateral symmetry of lobsters and centi- 

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