THE HAND AS AN UNRULY MEMBER. 489 
the elbow forward; but when he is obliged to take the 
arm of the opposite side, he seems to have lost all faith in 
the hand, and leaves it in a position which, though cor- 
rect in so far as the thumb is made to correspond with 
the little toe, is inconsistent with his own theory, and 
inadmissible on account of the displacement of the whole 
limb. And here was his error, in supposing that a ra- 
tional comparison of the limb involved not merely a dis- 
location and reversion of the arm, but a transposition to 
the opposite side of the body, the right arm being thus 
made to correspond with the left leg g, and the left arm 
with the right lee. And while we Hator the great anato- 
- mist, who, in attempting a comparison between different 
regions of the same individual, really originated a new 
kind of Comparative Anatomy, which is destined to fill 
a large place in future investigations, we must deplore 
the method he employed, a method repugnant alike to 
common sense and the respect we ought to entertain for 
the relations God has established between the different 
parts of the animal frame. And it is doubtless to this 
pernicious example of Vicq d’Azyr that we must ascribe 
the extraordinary liberties which some of his successors 
have taken with the limbs, forcing upon them their pre- 
Conceived ideas, as if each had said, “if the facts do not 
Pored with sa theory, why, so much the worse for the 
facts 
Tt i is hard for us to believe that the great Cuvier, whose 
masterly demonstrations of corresponding parts in differ- 
ent animals constituted an era in anatomical science, and 
at the same time furnished the basis for a true classifica- 
tion, could have been so blinded by his exclusive devotion 
to Final Causes, and by his dislike for the transcendental 
theories of St. Hilaire as, during at least the cag! part 
AMERICAN, NAT., VOL. I. 
