BASIS OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL. 471 



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

 organization to which the third eyelid, in man a mere rudiment, 

 attains in them. Not wanted in man, the organ sinks to its 

 rudimentary and scarcely perceptible condition. Of essential 

 service in birds, it suddenly acquires its seemingly highest deve- 

 lopment. Yet the organ was always present, rudimentary in 

 one, developed in the other. Let us take another instance. 



' ' The adult, or grown-up man, has, as you all no doubt know, 

 three bones to each toe, with the exception of the first ; these 

 three bones are connected to each other, and to the metatarsal 

 bone, their supporters, by three joints. In the feet of birds you 

 meet with four or five bones in certain of the toes ; and it might 

 seem to you that the feet of birds were formed on a different 

 numerical plan at least ; but it is not so : for in man, as in 

 birds, each digital bone is formed of two elements, or distinct 

 bones, at first, that is, in the young of each : as the bird grows 

 up, they remain distinct in man, on the contrary, they unite 

 that is all. The arrangement is not only analogous, but homo- 

 logous or identical, in the strictest sense of the terms. 



** Again, remember that a thousand similar instances might 

 be given : I merely select a few of the easiest understood. 



1 ' In man there is a little cartilage, scarcely perceptible, con- 

 nected to one of those bones occupying the nostrils, called turbi- 

 nated bones. It may or it may not in him serve any purpose ; 

 that is a matter of pure indifference. It is a rudimentary and a 

 useless organ seemingly. Now, mark the extension and develop- 

 ment of this cartilage or organ in the horse still more in the 

 whale ; in the horse, where it most admirably serves to shut off 

 the great cavities of the nostrils from the vestibular cavitiis in 

 front thus protecting them from foreign bodies : in the whale, 

 acquiring their presumed highest development, these cartilages, 

 now grown to the size of bolsters, return after breathing, into 

 the vast nostrils of the whale from which they had been momen- 

 tarily withdrawn, filling them up, sealing them hermetically 

 against the pressure of a thousand fathoms deep of water, which 

 they sustain with ease, when, plunging into the vast abyss of the 

 ocean, the giant of nature seeks to avoid his enemies. 



" Let us now briefly review the progress we have made in this 

 the highest of all analyses : deepest of all theories : most im- 

 portant to man. Man, we have seen, stands not alone, he is one 

 of many ; a part and parcel of the organic world, from all eternity. 

 That organic world is the product of secondary causes. During 

 his growth he undergoes numerous metamorphoses, too numerous 

 even for the human imagination. These have a relation to the 

 organic world. They embrace the entire range of organic life, 

 from the beginning to the end of time. Nature can have no 

 double systems ; no amendments or second thoughts ; no excep- 



