NOMENCLATURE. LI 
on the contrary we at once acknowledge the complete form of an archetype column, taken as a whole, and 
own it to be that form to which not only the several members of any column of the series may be referred, 
but to which even the complete figure of any column of such series may also be referred, and find in it its 
full and proper homologue. This is what we are to understand by the word archetype as hereafter made 
use of. It is this name which we shall apply to the primitive model of forms standing in series, to the 
apxntvmos of that series, and our task shall be to prove that a vertebra is not this archetype of the spinal 
skeleton axis any more than the capital of a column is the archetype of the serial colonnade, and that it is 
as impossible to characterise unity in variety by the use of the name Vertebra, as it is to demonstrate the 
whole. quantity in any proportional of itself If unity be the whole quantity, and variety be the proportionals 
of the same, then a vertebra which is a part of its plus archetype must be a proportional variety of plus 
- quantity, which is unity, as we shall hereafter prove. 
There is an error deeply rooted in Comparative Science, and it is this :—This science talks of Unity, 
but “it knows not of the fioure and proportions of the form of unity. It talks of unity in variety, but it 
can know nothing of the law prodicitie variety, not haying ascertained that form of unity from which 
variety is struck out. It is an error, propagative of other errors, to speak of that quality of form, the 
unity, when we know not of the figure and proportions of it ; £52 what can we. reason but from what we 
know? And whilst the science of anatomy at present only knows of the infinite varieties connected and 
related to each other by bonds of varying degrees of similitude, such as the skeleton designs represent, we 
still are destined to listen to anatomical discourse concerning the form of unity which it can no more 
render into substantial character for the contemplation of the wakeful eye of mid-day reason than if it 
were a figure of the dream. What anatomist is there who may be said to have characterised the form of 
unity ¢ There is no one of them who has approached this goal of comparative research, and we still are 
as blind to the actual figure of unity, as the Peripatetics were in ancient Athens, under their founder 
Aristotle,* or as those sages were who pondered upon this form as they studied in the groves of Academus. 
Anatomical science still demands the demonstration of the form of unity. ‘This science has had 
already a sufficiency of speech concerning the aerial existence of the qualities of unity ; but as the mere 
words are mere sounds, and passing as sounds, and as by analogy we may reasonably infer that the mere 
phrase of speech from modern philosophers concerning unity in variety, will pass from the mind like the 
intrenchant vision, just 4s it has done in bygone ages amongst the meditative Greeks, so has anatomical 
science assumed to itself the right of founding its belief upon the condition of unity only in so far as it can 
pe spoken of demonstrably, and the first step towards this undertaking of demonstration must be to cancel 
from its nomenclature the name Vertebra as an implement of generalisation. 
Anatomy being essentially a science by demonstration only, if unity be acknowledged already to exist 
as characterising animal forms, we have reason to conclude that. this acknowledgment as to the positive 
existence of unity has been premature, forasmuch as no anatomist can draw the proportions of the form 
of unity. Hence, when the mind asks what anatomist is there who has not spoken of unity and unity in 
* Aristotle was deeply impressed with the philosophical resemblance of animal beings, and expressed his ideas as follows :— 
«But some animals neither have parts specifically the same, nor the same according to excess and defect, but according to analogy ; 
just as bone is analogous to the spine, a nail to a hoof, a hand to a claw, and the scales of a fish to the feathers of a bird. a 
See History of Animals, book i., p. 4; transl. by Taylor. 
