10 ZOOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY 



laws, methods and progress of nature have nearly always sprung from 

 the examination of the smallest objects which she contains, and from 

 apparently the most insignificant enquiries. This truth, already 

 estabhshed by many remarkable facts, will receive in the course of this 

 work a new accession of evidence, and should convince us more than 

 ever that in the study of nature no object whatever can be dis- 

 regarded. 



The purpose of the study of animals is not merely to ascertain their 

 different races, nor to determine all the distinctions among them by 

 specifying their special characters. This study further aims at 

 acquiring a knowledge of the functions which animals possess, the 

 causes of the presence and maintenance of life in them, and of the 

 remarkable progression which they exhibit in the complexity of their 

 organisation, as well as in the number and development of their 

 functions. 



At bottom, the physical and moral are without doubt one and the 

 same thing. It is by a study of the organisation of the different orders 

 of known animals that this truth can be set in the strongest light. Now 

 since these products from a common origin, at first hardly separated, 

 become eventually divided into two entirely distinct orders, these 

 two orders when examined at their greatest divergence have seemed 

 to us and still seem to many persons to have nothing in common. 



The influence of the physical on the moral has however already 

 been recognised,^ but it seems to me that sufficient attention has not 

 yet been given to the influence of the moral on the physical. Now 

 these two orders of things which have a common origin re-act upon 

 one another, especially when they appear the most widely separated ; 

 and we are now in a position to prove that each affects the variations 

 of the other. 



It seems to me that we have gone the wrong way to work in the en- 

 deavour to show the common origin of the two orders of results which, 

 in their highest divergence, constitute what is called the physical 

 and the moral. 



For the study of these two kinds of objects, apparently so distinct, 

 has been initiated in man himself. Now his organisation, having 

 reached the Hmit of complexity and perfection, exhibits the greatest 

 complication in the causes of the phenomena of life, feeling and 

 function. It is consequently the most difficult from which to infer 

 the origin of so many phenomena. 



After the organisation of man had been so well studied, as was the 

 case, it was a mistake to examine that organisation for the purposes of 



'See the interesting work of M. Cabanis entitled Rapport du physique et du 

 moral de I'homme. 



