196 The American Naturalist. [March, 



Thus the protozoon eats, grows, reproduces ; so does the man, 

 and for the same reasons. Whether we regard the processes 

 as homologous or analogous, these acts performed by every 

 animal have their foundation in the ability of the primitive 

 cell to do the same things. It requires a certain familiarity 

 with zoology and physiology to be capable of appreciating this 

 connection, and it is a hopeless undertaking to try to teach 

 such conceptions to those who are not furnished with the nec- 

 essary preliminary knowledge. And there are those who are 

 instructed in such matters, who for the want of sufficient 

 deductive ability are unable to see the dependence of the phe- 

 nomena because to their untrained minds the complicated pro- 

 cesses of ingestion, such as deglutition, insalivation, mastica- 

 tion, digestion, etc.. apparently differ so radically from the 

 simple assimilative act of the amoeba. 



The ends attained are identical, though the processes may 

 differ, somewhat as the sun-dial, the hour-glass and the clep- 

 sydra differ from the modern watch. No matter how complex 

 the organism, the individual cells that compose it absorb food 

 directly, very much the same as do primitive single-celled 



The complicated differentiations, to those unfamiliar with 

 the subject, differ radically from their origin, as Talmage 

 imagines he differs from the ancestral ape. 



That analogies have been considered useful in some ways is 

 shown by many attempts to utilize them, as, for example, in 

 the celebrated work of Bishop Butler, whose success in the 

 application Huxley thinks was not very great, for the latter 

 claimed that the story of Jack and the Bean-stalk could be 

 proven by the same method of reasoning. The sloppy man- 

 ner in which analogies have been selected to illustrate certain 

 points show that while there was acknowledgment of their 

 value there is universal ignorance of their real nature. 



I firmly believe that there will eventually be elaborated a 

 science of analogies which will bear a relationship to the 

 imperfect usage of the past in such matters that the old bears 

 to the present zoology and botany. 



