Zoological Classification. 363 



beyond this they cannot safely go. In attempting to explain the 

 structure of animals by the doctrine of final causes, there is a 

 constant tendency towards the assumption of knowing all about 

 it, when, in plain fact, some of the conjectures may be doubt- 

 ful, and others readily capable of disproof. True science does 

 not attempt to resolve the question of why the universe, or 

 anything it contains, was made in a particular way. Our in- 

 tellectual vision is limited to so minute a portion of the whole, 

 that such an inquiry is beyond our reach. But we may suc- 

 cessfully exert ourselves in endeavours to ascertain how certain 

 things are made, and what work they perform ; and when 

 Natural Theology takes possession of the facts of science, its 

 most reverent and rational course is to learn as much as it can 

 of the wisdom, the order, and the benevolence of the wondrous 

 plan, without pretending to be acquainted with principles that 

 could only be deduced from a knowledge of the whole range of 

 antecedents that led to particular consequences, and with the ulti- 

 mate results which such consequences will entail. Well does Pro- 

 fessor Huxley exclaim, " For any reason we can discover to the 

 contrary, that combination of natural forces which we term life 

 might have resulted from, or been manifested by, a series of 

 infinitely diverse structures • nor, indeed, would anything in the 

 nature of the case lead us to suspect a community of organiza- 

 tion between animals so different in habit and appearance as a 

 porpoise, a gazelle, an eagle and a crocodile, or a butterfly and 

 a lobster." In another passage he thus comments upon the 

 methods of reasoning which, in the hands of Cuvier and his 

 followers, have led to many valuable results, and likewise 

 tempted many incautious thinkers into much false philosophy. 

 " If," says Professor Huxley, " a fragmentary fossil be dis- 

 covered, consisting of no more than a ramus of a mandible, and 

 that part of the skull with which it articulated, a knowledge of 

 this law — (correlation) — may enable the paleontologist to affirm, 

 with great confidence, that the animal of which it formed a 

 part suckled its young*, and had non-nucleated red blood cor- 

 puscles ■ and to predict that, should the back of that skull be 

 discovered, it will exhibit two occipital condyles and a well 

 ossified basi-occipital bone. Deductions of this kind, such as 

 that made by Cuvier in the famous case of the fossil opossum 

 at Montmartre, have often been verified, and are well calculated 

 to impress the vulgar imagination, so that they have taken 

 rank as the triumphs of the anatomist. But it should be care- 

 fully borne in mind that, like all merely empirical laws, which 

 rest upon a comparatively narrow observational basis, the rea- 

 soning from them may at any time break down. If Cuvier, for 

 example, had had to do with a fossil Thylacinus instead of a 

 fossil opossum, he would not have found the marsupial bones, 



