ON THE MORPHOLOGICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 203 



survey. At present it interests us only as far as it 

 asserts itself also in science. In the study of natural 

 objects we meet with a class of students who are at- 

 tracted by things as they are : not so much by those 

 which we artificially prepare in our laboratories, as by 

 the infinite variety of real forms ; not so much by the 

 geometrical types which allow us to bring them together 

 under some abstract formula, as by the apparent disorder 

 and divine confusion in which real things are scattered 

 about in the heavens and on our globe. It is not the 

 general equation which in its complete solution contains 

 all real and many unreal instances merely as special 

 cases that interests them, but the individual examples 

 themselves. The general laws of motion admit of an 

 infinity of special cases which may never occur in nature ; 

 organic chemistry adds daily to the already enormous 

 array of compounds which do not present themselves in 

 living organisms. Clearly, besides the abstract sciences, 

 which profess to introduce us to the general relations 

 or laws which govern everything that is or can be real, 

 there must be those sciences which study the actually 

 existing forms as distinguished from the possible ones, 

 the " here " and " there," the " where " and " how," of 

 things and processes ; which look upon real things not 

 as examples of the general and universal, but as alone 

 possessed of that mysterious something which dis- 

 tinguishes the real and actual from the possible and 

 artificial. These sciences are the truly descriptive 4. 



The descrip- 



sciences, in opposition to the abstract ones, ihey are tive sciences, 

 indeed older than the abstract sciences, and they have, 

 in the course of the period under review in this work, 



