208 The American Naturalist. [March, 



tions of the universal workings will be obtained through a 

 scientific study of analogies. 



The apparent analogy may be taken as tentative, or it may 

 be wholly false, or metely poetical, such as is afforded us by 

 the allegories and mythologies, and even scientific writers' 

 may find a use for an apparent analogy in illustrating certain 



The real analogy is such by direct interdependence and 

 relationship, and the great difficulty in determining its reality 

 lies in the necessity for the accurate understanding of these 

 relationships. 



It is not possible for any one human mind to be thoroughly 

 versed in chemistry, physics, biology, psychology, geology, and 

 astronomy, ami for this reason the one who may be familiar 

 with one or two branches and have a fair knowledge of the 

 rest, will be able only to generalize, but his suggestions could 

 be heard and amended by a worker in complementary fields, 

 and eventually a synthetic study can be erected, unifying 

 what is known in these various departments, and thus astron- 

 omy may come to explain a problem in microscopy ; biology 

 may clear up a chemical point ; and sociology, in the light of 

 the other sciences, may explain an otherwise inscrutable phys- 

 ological matter. 



Necessarily the history of the past may thus be laid bare, 

 and ethology may become a science such as David Hume 

 little dreamed of. The reasons for behavior, the feelings, 

 passions, vices, and virtues, may thus be seen. It will be 

 found that we are truly creatures of circumstance. 



The significance of institutions may be more easily under- 

 stood in their relation to the commonwealth. We may be 

 better able to determine whether a measure will be useful or 

 harmful, for example, when we make comparisons of certain 

 physiological processes with sociological ones, there may arise 

 a necessity for assigning a certain contemplated national 

 movement to its proper place in the general economy. These 

 comparisons may enable us to prove that instead of being a 

 newly evolved useful structure, it may be in the nature of a 

 cancer or an ulcer hostile to the national life. 



