ON THE MORPHOLOGICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 211 



and later periods, and which will enable us to see how 

 that great change has gradually come about. 



All studies that deal with the actual things and events 

 by which, on a large and on a minute scale, we are sur- 

 rounded in nature, are comprised under the term Natural 

 History. In opposition to Natural Philosophy, which 

 comprises our abstract knowledge of the possible forms of 

 motion and the possible combinations of the elements into 

 which we have so far been able to decompose matter, 

 Natural History deals only with such forms and combina- 

 tions as actually exist around us, only with such processes 

 of change as actually take place in nature. Some of these 

 forms and changes we may be able to collect in our 

 museums or imitate in our laboratories, but the forms of 

 nature cannot in this way be exhausted, nor her pro- 

 cesses understood. Her forms or things do not exist in 

 isolation, but always in. a certain environment, having a 

 definite plan, a position in time and space. These sur- 

 rounding features are as important as the things them- 

 selves. Besides this, the processes of nature draw on 

 the great factor of time with a much more liberal hand 

 than we can permit ourselves to do. Nevertheless, as in is. 



Divisions of 



the abstract sciences we deal with things at rest and with natural 



history. 



things in motion, so we can appropriately divide our 

 study of the real and the actual into the attempt to 

 give some account of the forms and things which 

 actually exist and continually recur, and the study 

 of the changes which things undergo. In abstract 

 science the terms statics and dynamics, the doctrines 

 of rest and of motion, have been generally introduced, 

 to distinguish the two great aims of study ; some cor- 



