502 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. 
micians (who, of course, were asking for monetary help) in the following shock- 
ingly homely words: ‘Der Grund ist derer Leute ihre verfluchte Curieusitat.’ 
This blamed curiosity, the beginnings of which can be traced very far back in 
the lower animals, is most acutely centred in our desire to find out who we are, 
whence we have come, and whither we shall go. And even if Zoology, con- 
sidering the first and last of these three questions as settled, should some day 
solve the problem: Whence have we come? there would remain outside Zoology 
the greater Why? 
Generalisations, conclusions, can be arrived at only through comparison. 
Comparison leads no further where the objects are alike. If, for instance, we 
restrict ourselves to the search for true homologies, dealing with homogenes 
only, all we find is that once upon a time some organism has produced, invented, 
a certain arrangement of Anlage out of which that organ arose, the various 
features of which we have compared in the descendants. Result: we have 
arrived at an accomplished fact. These things, in spite of all their variety in 
structure and function, being homogenes, tell us nothing, because according to 
our mode of procedure we cannot compare that monophyletic Anlage with any- 
thing else, since we have reduced all the homogenous modifications to one. 
Logically it is true that there can have been only one, but in the living world 
of nature there are no such ironbound categories and absolute distinctions. 
For instance, if we compare the organs of one and the same individual, we at 
once observe repetition, e.g., that of serial homology, which implies many diffi- 
culties, with very different interpretations. Even in such an apparently simple 
case as the relation between shoulder girdle and pelvis we are at a loss, since the 
decision depends upon our view as to the origin of the paired limbs, whether 
both are modified visceral arches, and in this case serially repeated homogenes, 
or whether they are the derivatives from one lateral fin, which is itself a serial 
compound, from which, however, the proximal elements, the girdles, are supposed 
to have arisen independently. What is metamerism? Is it the outcome of a 
process of successive repetitions so that the units are homogenes, or did the 
division take place at one time all along the line, or is it due to a combination 
of the two procedures? 
The same vagueness finds its parallel when dealing with the corresponding 
organs of different animals, since these afford the absolute chance that organs 
of the same structure and function may not be reducible to one germ, but may 
be shown to have arisen independently in time as well as with reference to the 
space they occupy in their owners. As heterogenes they can be compared as to 
their causes. In the study of the evolution of homogenes the problem is to 
account for their divergencies, whilst the likeness, the agreements, so to speak 
their greatest common measure, is eo ipso taken to be due to inheritance. When, 
on the contrary, dealing with heterogenes we are attracted by their resemblances, 
which since they cannot be due to inheritance must have a common cause 
outside themselves. Now, since a leading feature of the evolution of homogenes 
is divergence, whilst that of heterogenes implies convergence from different 
starting-points, it follows that the more distant are these respective starting- 
points (either in time or in the material) the better is our chance of extracting 
the greatest common measure out of the unknown number of causes which com- 
bine in the production of even the apparently simplest organ. 
These resemblances are a very promising field and the balance of importance 
will more and more incline towards the investigation of Function, a study which, 
however, does not mean mere physiology with its present-day aims in the now 
tacitly accepted sense, but that broad study of life and death which is to yield 
the answer to the question Why? 
Meantime, comparative anatomy will not be shelved; it will always retain 
the casting-vote as to the degree of affinity among resemblances, but emphatically 
its whole work is not to be restricted to this occupation. It will increasingly 
have to reckon with the functions, indeed never without them. The animal 
refuses to yield its secrets unless it be considered as a living individual. It is 
true that Gegenbaur himself was most emphatic in asserting that an organ is the 
result of its function. Often he held up to scorn the embryographer’s method of 
muddling cause and effect, or he mercilessly showed that in the reconstruction 
of the evolution of an organ certain features cannot have been phases unless 
they imply physiological continuity. And yet how moderately is function dealt 
a 
