resemblances and differences--of their analogous or conflicting
properties, and of all the relations in which they stand to one another?
The absolute, if it exist at all, is but of the concurrence of man's own
knowledge; we judge and can judge of things only by their bearings one
upon another; hence whenever a method limits us to only a single
subject, whenever we consider it in its solitude and without regard to
its resemblances or to its differences from other objects, we can attain
to no real knowledge, nor yet, much less, reach any general principle.
We do but give names, and make descriptions of a thing, and of all its
parts. Hence comes it that, after three thousand years of dissection,
anatomy is still but a nomenclature, and has hardly advanced a step
towards its true object, which is the science of animal economy.
Furthermore, what defects are there not in the method itself, which
should above all things else be simple and easy to be understood,
depending as it does upon inspection and having denominations only for
its end! For seeing that nomenclature has been mistaken for knowledge,
men have made it their chief business to multiply names, instead of
limiting things; they have crushed themselves under the burden of
details, and been on the look out for differences where there was no
distinction. When they had given a new name they conceived of it as a
new thing, and described the smallest parts with the most minutious
exactness, while the description of some still smaller part, forgotten
or neglected by previous anatomists, has been straightway hailed as a
discovery. The denominations themselves being often taken from things
which had no relation to the object that it was desired to denominate,
have served but to confound confusion. The part of the brain, for
example, which is called testes and nates, wherein does it so differ
from the rest of the brain that it should deserve a name? These names,
taken at haphazard or springing from some preconceived opinion, have
themselves become the parents of new prejudices and speculations; other
names given to parts which have been ill observed, or which are even
non-existent, have been sources of new errors. What functions and uses
has it not been attempted to foist upon the pineal gland, and on the
alleged empty space in the brain which is called the arch, the first of
which is but a gland, while the very existence of the other is
doubtful,--the empty space being perha