10 ~ INTRODUCTION. . 
any unit of the human spine reckoning downwards from the occiput, and compare such unit with others 
numerically corresponding in all the skeleton axes of the four classes, we observe this spinal element to give 
example of cervical, dorsal, lumbar, sacral, and caudal modification 2 What is the typical form of a vertebra ? 
It is the law of form which produces the skeleton figures as proportional varieties fashioned ofa uniform 
archetype structure, which must answer this question. 
The abuse of names turns the mind still helplessly in quest of the phantom unity of form.* Not knowing 
of the law of form, what can we know of the archetype of form—the unity upon which the law is operating ? 
Not knowing of the archetype form, how can we appreciate the passages of that law which produces, by 
metamorphosis, the varieties of form from the figure of the archetype ? . 
A vertebra is not an archetype figure, and cannot be accounted such so long as we discover it to be a 
figure of increase. It is. the name which blindfolds the eye of understanding. The capital of a column is 
not the column itself; the column-is not the Parthenon itself; the acanthus is not the capital; the 
Parthenon is the name which expresses the whole design of connected parts, and is inclusive of all such 
parts ; but the part is as little expressive of the entire structure signified by the name Parthenon as the 
vertebra is of the skeleton archetype, of which form it is a part. The part does not contain the whole, nor 
even if we-call such part “Colossus,” shall it add one inch to its actual dimensions ; and it is even so with 
Vertebra, for although we shall be led to generalise upon an animal kingdom with this name, we shall still 
fall as far short of characterising the figure of archetype unity among skeleton forms as if we named the 
peristyle, acanthus, and drew our generalisation according to the proportions of the acanthus. 
So long as, in comparative science, we allow ourselves to be imposed upon by a name applied to a part 
of a greater figure, we can never free ourselves from the trammels of nomenclature, and extend the 
observation to the contemplation of a whole. The name Vertebra has been fixed upon a part of the 
archetype structure, and comparative science has blindly founded its generalisations upon such name. _ But » 
it must appear most evident that as the part does not and cannot express the form of the entirety, neither 
can the name of such part characterise the figure of unity, which is a quality of form possessed solely by 
the archetype or-entirety. 
The archetype being the complete form, and a vertebra being known to stand as part of this 
structure, it follows that if we found our generalisations upon the figure of that which is part, we choose a 
much less capable instrument for such generalising method, than if we had started at first in the use 
of the complete form which must include all forms lesser than itself, In a colonnade composed of 
identical or homologous columns, we choose one column as a type of all others standing in series with 
itself ; such column is at once recognised to bea complete form, it is an archetype, and we understand the 
eapital to be as part of this archetype. When we would generalise upon the series of those archetype 
forms which compose. the colonnade, we do not make choice of any part of the archetype form, such, for 
example, as the surmounting capital, and then affix to the entire series of archetype columns the name 
which is proper to the part capital, and thus undertake to demonstrate unity by the use of such name ; but 
* «This, if we rightly consider, and confine not our thoughts and abstract ideas, to names, as if there were or could be no 
other sorts of things than what known names had already determined, and as it were, set out; we should think of things with 
greater freedom and less confusion than perhaps we do.”—See Reality of Knowledge, LocKe. 
