mm, INTRODUCTION. 
variety, the mind may also ask what anatomist is there who may not be said to have discoursed of a form 
which he has never known, has never heard of, and can have never seen, and what is the substance of that 
discourse which only imagines a quality of form that it has never been able to demonstrate 2 “Fy 
Skeleton forms are not equal quantities, and, therefore, cannot be accounted uniform; but those skeleton 
forms manifest no other condition of variation than that which the proportionals of a whole quantity bear to ~ 
that whole or archetype. What, therefore, is the form of this archetype 2 Can this be ascertained by any 
process of comparative reasoning similar to the rule of equation? We know that a—is then not equal to 
a+b; but it is this very process of subtraction which tells us that the addition of 4 to a will equate it to the 
whole quantity Ee) which we call the archetype. | | 
Now, it has been said that every science possesses its own method of investigation, and has its peculiar 
elements of certainty ; that metaphysics and moral philosophy possess a metaphysical and moral certainty ; 
that the mathematical.sciences are based upon self-evident propositions or axioms founded upon the nature 
of things, and by means of which they proceed from the known to the unknown, and from the ground-work of 
problems already demonstrated, ascend to new truths; that the purely physical sciences are based upon 
constant phenomena, and hence that mathematics are directly applicable to them ; but it has been added 
that the zoological sciences, in which effects are seen to vary continually according to their causes, cannot 
have applied to them the art of numbers, or the rules of geometry. This assertion, however true it may be 
with regard to the healing art in its present ‘state, which all, except the omnipotent charlatan, honestly 
confess to be unallied to mathematical certainty and broadly founded principle ; still, by no means, expresses 
the capability which comparative reasoning possesses of arriving at general truths.* The facts of development 
which comparative osteology takes account of, are those which appear within the bounds of philosophical 
| analogy—are the creations of a law operative upon plus quantity, subtracting from that quantity or archetype, 
and thus establishing minus or proportional variety. However reasonable may be the objection to imitate 
a Condorcet by testing the moral code with a+4, yet it cannot be denied, that the entire subject of comparative 
osteology teems with this simple rule, and that unity 7a variety cannot be explained by any other reading, 
The archetype skeleton form is in itself a completeness, and it is to the recognition of this figure that we 
have drawn our comparisons between skeleton structures. This archetype skeleton figure being a complete- 
ness, requires, like the circle or the sphere, neither addition to or subtraction from its own entire design, in’ 
order that such design may be rendered more complete. This archetype form is the prime model, and being 
so, must be regarded as the unity. Whatever dell be the proportions which science shall assign to this form 
in future time, it is well to know now at the outset, that a vertebra is not an archetype or prime model, 
for it is known to be a figure constantly subjected to modification by increase of parts or degenerescence of 
parts. It cannot be called unity, for it is not uniform ihe to itself or to those forms which take on. the 
serial order with it. It is a form to which special anatomy has blindly applied a name; and so long as 
‘comparative science blindly adopts such name and generalises with the use of it, that science will lead on to 
error, having. commenced with error, for this is cause and consequence. 
* The science of Form which is developed according to the law of the @vo.c must, whilst lying within the limits of physical 
operation, manifest of itself some elements of certainty, and “ Quemadmodum in mathematica ita etiam in physicd, investigatio 
rerum difficilium ca methodo, que vocatur analytica, semper antecedere debet eam que appellatur synthetica.”—See Mevwton’s 
Optice, sive de reflexionibus, Fe., p. 412. 
