8[ PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [NoV. 5, 



This principle, howeverj—^those modes of thought — which Cmder 

 affirmed to have guided him in his interpretation of fossil remains, 

 and which he believed to be a true clew in such researches, were re- 

 pudiated or contested by two of his contemporaries. 



GeofFroy St. Hilaire denied the existence of a design in the con- 

 struction of any part of an organized body : he protested against the 

 deduction of a purpose from the contemplation of such structures 

 as the valves of the veins or the converging lens of the eye. 



Beyond the coexistence of such a form of flood-gate with such a 

 course of the fluid, or of such a course of light with such a converging 

 medium, Geoffroy affirmed that thought, at least his mode of think- 

 ing, could not sanely, or ought not, to go. Now this objection has, 

 at least, the merit of being intelligible : we know on what ground the 

 adversary stands and what he would be at. 



From this frank assertion of the tenets of the Democritic and Lu- 

 cretian schools, those concerned in the right conception and successful 

 modes of studying organized structures by the Young have little to 

 fear. But the insinuation and masked advocacy of the doctrine subver- 

 sive of a recognition of the Higher Mind, — the oft-recurring side-blows 

 at Teleolog}', — call for constant watchfulness and prompt exposure. 



It is not, however, my business here to go over the arguments 

 which have been adduced by teleologists and anti-teleologists from 

 Democritus and Plato down to Cabanis and Whewell. 



In the degree in which the reasoning faculty is developed on this 

 planet and is exercised hj our species, it appears to be a more healthy 

 and normal condition of such faculty, — certainly one which has been 

 productive of most accession to truths, as exemplified in the mental 

 workings of an Aristotle, a Galen, a Harvey, and a Cuvier, — to admit 

 the instinctive, irresistible impression of a design or purpose in such 

 structures as the valves of the vascular system and the dioptric me- 

 chanism of the eye. 



In regard to the few intellects, — they have ever been a small and 

 unfruitful minority, — who do not receive that impression and will not 

 admit the validity or existence of final causes in physiology, — I am 

 disposed to consider such intellects, not as the higher and more nor- 

 mal examples, but rather as manifesting some, perhaps congenital, 

 defect of mind, allied or analogous to ' colour-blindness ' through 

 defect of the optic nerve, or the inaudibleness of notes above a certain 

 pitch through defect of the acoustic nerve. 



M. De Blainville chiefly based his opposition to the Cuvierian 

 principle of correlated structures as applied to Palaeontology upon 

 the mistakes which Cuvier had made in their application, and on the 

 limits within which he had been bounded when successfully applying 

 them. For, admitting that the carnivority of an extinct animal 

 could be deduced from an ungual phalanx, he asks, ''What bone of 

 the hand would assure you that the humerus of such carnivora was 

 perforated, or otherwise, above the inner condyle ? What bone of 

 the fore-limb would tell you whether there was a clavicle or not, or 

 an OS penis*?" 



* De Blainville, op. cit. p. 36. 



