are explained by Geometry. 3 
quisitely geometrical ; and if it be certain, as it is, that the 
proprieties and improprieties belonging to geometrical forms 
and principles are the same universally, whether applied to the 
forms and courses of stars or of atoms, of plants or of ani- 
mals, we are called upon, in the absence of evidence to the 
contrary, to anticipate that the forms and movements, whe- 
ther of the intimate structures of orgasms or of entire organ- 
ised beings, however much more elaborate and varied they 
may be than the forms or movements of the stars, are yet, 
equally with them, cases of applied mathematics. 
Proceeding on this principle, which, if it receive mature 
consideration, cannot but secure the reader’s acquiescence, I 
proceed to show that a few simple and well ascertained geo- 
metrical facts and relations, when viewed in reference to the 
media in which orgasms live, explain the most characteristic 
forms and phenomena of orgasms, for which, so far as I am 
aware, science has hitherto had no explanation to give. 
The problem, in its most general terms, may be thus con- 
ceived. Given—as the highest generalisation which the 
observation of organic nature has supplied—the idea of a 
being which shall live, that is, a being which shall change 
continuously from within in a determinate manner, or accord- 
ing to law; given also the general conditions of its existence, 
it is required to explain the primary elements of the form and 
structure, and course of life of such a being. The problem is 
legitimised by the same fact which legitimises all philosophy, 
viz., that ‘our minds are curious, and our eyes are bad ;”*— 
our curiosity attested by the great number of the students of 
nature ; and the badness of our eyes by the fact that, after 
the much which the microscope has been made to reveal, still 
all the most exquisitely plastic fluids (white of egg, serum of 
blood, &c.), and all the most important tissues (intercellular 
substance, the walls of cells and tubules, elastic and contractile 
tissue, &c.), look as if they were perfectly structureless and 
homogeneous. Whence, also, we may understand at what a 
distance Nature keeps our organs of sense from her actual 
laboratory, and how altogether dependent we are upon the eye 
of the mind, the use of reason, if we are to find admittance 
* Fontenelle’s Plurality of Worlds, First Kvening. 
