SEARCH
0-9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Prev | Current Page 130 | Next

Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895

"American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology"

They resolve him into
the finest particles into which the microscope will enable them to break
him up. They consider the performance of his various functions and
activities, and they look at the manner in which he occurs on the
surface of the world. Then they turn to other animals, and taking the
first handy domestic animal--say a dog--they profess to be able to
demonstrate that the analysis of the dog leads them, in gross, to
precisely the same results as the analysis of the man; that they find
almost identically the same bones, having the same relations; that they
can name the muscles of the dog by the names of the muscles of the man,
and the nerves of the dog by those of the nerves of the man, and that,
such structures and organs of sense as we find in the man such also we
find in the dog; they analyse the brain and spinal cord, and they find
that the nomenclature which fits the one answers for the other. They
carry their microscopic inquiries in the case of the dog as far as they
can, and they find that his body is resolvable into the same elements as
those of the man. Moreover, they trace back the dog's and the man's
development, and they find that, at a certain stage of their existence,
the two creatures are not distinguishable the one from the other; they
find that the dog and his kind have a certain distribution over the
surface of the world, comparable in its way to the distribution of the
human species.


Pages:
118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142