passed by too lightly. The travelled experience may now sit down and
contemplate.

That which I have said and proved elsewhere in respect to the skeleton
system may, with equal truth, be remarked of the nervous system--namely,
that the question is not in how far does the limit of diversity extend
through the condition of an evidently common analogy, but by what rule
or law the uniform ens is rendered the diverse entity? The womb of
anatomical science is pregnant of the true interpretation of the law of
unity in variety; but the question is of longer duration than was the
life of the progenitor. Though Aristotle and Linnaeus, and Buffon and
Cuvier, and Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Leibnitz, and Gothe, have lived and
spoken, yet the present state of knowledge proclaims the Newton of
physiology to be as yet unborn. The iron scalpel has already made
acquaintance with not only the greater parts, but even with the
infinitesimals of the human body; and reason, confined to this narrow
range of a subject, perceives herself to be imprisoned, and quenches her
guiding light in despair. Originality has outlived itself; and discovery
is a long-forgotten enterprise, except as pursued in the microcosm on
the field of the microscope, which, it must be confessed, has drawn
forth demonstrations only commensurate in importance with the magnitude
of the littleness there seen.

The subject of our study, whichever it happen to be, may appear
exhausted of all interest, and the promise of valuable novelty, owing to
two reasons:--It may be, like descriptive human anatomy, so cold, poor
and sterile in its own nature, and so barren of product, that it will be
impossible for even the genius of Promethean fire to warm it; or else,
like existing physiology, the very point of view from which the mental
eye surveys the theme, will blight the fair prospect of truth, distort
induction, and clog up the paces of ratiocination. The physiologist of
the present day is too little of a comparative anatomist, and far too
closely enveloped in the absurd jargon of the anthropotomist, ever to
hope to reveal any great truth for science, and dispel the mists which
still hang over the phenomena of the nervous system. He is steeped too
deeply in the base nomenclature of the antique school, and too indolent
to question the import of Pons, Commissure, Island, Taenia, Nates,
Testes, Cornu, Hippocamp, Thalamus, Vermes, Arbor Vitro, Respiratory
Tract, Ganglia of Increase, and