788 ANATOMY OF VERTEBRATES. 



of Schelling illustrated, in the animal structures, the trans- 

 cendental idea of e the repetition of the whole in every part,' 

 operated disadvantageously to the calm enquiry into the prime 

 question at issue. To Cuvier this language seemed little better 

 than mystical jargon, and he alluded to it with transparent con- 

 tempt. 1 When he did extend inferences from comparative ana- 

 tomy beyond the adaptation of structure to function, Cuvier 

 went not beyond a recognition of what I have since termed 

 ' special homologies ' : 2 and this lowest degree of correspondence 

 he explained on the ground of the subserviency of such homolo- 

 gous parts to similar ends in different animals ; 3 viewing them, in 

 fact, in that relation which I express and contrast by the term 

 1 analogies.' 4 With Cuvier answerable parts occurred in the zoo- 

 logical scale because they had to perform similar functions. 



Most of my fellow-students at the Garden of Plants, in 1830, 

 and some subsequent fellow-labourers, Johannes Miiller, Rud. 

 Wagner, Milne-Edwards, Agassiz, implicitly accepted this ex- 

 planation of the fact of answerable bones and other parts oc- 

 curring in different species. 



After the publication of the f Memoir on the Pearly Nautilus,' 

 and of those on Monotrematous and Marsupial generation, which 

 subjects Cuvier had strongly recommended to my attention, the 

 question of the condition or law of special homologies pressed itself 

 upon me, more especially in connection with the task of arranging 

 and cataloguing the osteological part of the Hunterian Museum. 5 

 As my observations and comparisons accumulated, with pari 

 passu tests of observed phenomena of osteogeny, they enforced a 

 reconsideration of Cuvier's conclusions to which I had previously 

 yielded assent. To demonstrate the evidence of the community 

 of organisation, 1 found that the artifice of an archetype verte- 

 brate animal was as essential as that of the archetype plant had 

 been to Goethe in expressing analogous ideas ; and as the like 

 reference to an ' ideal type ' must be to all who undertake to 

 make intelligible the ' unity in variety ' pervading any group of 



1 * Quant a M. Oken, il declare les pieces en question les parties 6cailleuses des 

 temporaux, ou, selon son langage mystique, "la fourchette du membre superieur de 

 la tete." — Cet humerus de la tete de M. Oken devient pour M. Spix le pubis de cette 

 meme t&te ; ou, pour parler un langage intelligible, un des osselets de l'ouie, savoir le 

 marteau.' — cxxxix. torn. v. 2 e partie, p. 85. 



2 cxl. p. 7. 



3 ' Ce n'est qu'un principe subordonn6 a, un autre bien plus eleve' et bien plus fecond, 

 a celui des conditions d'existence, de la convenance des parties, de leur coordination 

 pour le role que 1' animal doit jouer dans la nature. Voila le vrai principe philoso- 

 phique d'ou decoulent la possibility de certaines ressemblances.' — ccxciv". p. 9. 



4 cxl. p. 7. * xliv. 



