far: but be content to see that skeletal form, as brought about by growth, is to a very large extent determined by mechanical conôÙsiôÙdeôÙraôÙtions, and tends to manifest itself as a diagram, or reflected image, of mechanical stress. If we fail, owing to the immense complexity of the case, to unravel all the mathôÙeôÙmatôÙiôÙcal principles involved in the construction of the skeleton, we yet gain something, and not a little, by applying this method to the familiar objects of our anatomical study: obvia conspicimus, nubem pellente mathesi26.
Before we leave this subject of mechanical adaptation, let us dwell once more for a moment upon the conôÙsiôÙdeôÙraôÙtions which arise from our conception of a field of force, or field of stress, in which tension and compression (for instance) are inevitably combined, and are met by the materials naturally fitted to resist them. It has been remarked over and over again how harmoniously the whole organism hangs together, and how throughout its fabric one part is related and fitted to another in strictly functional correlation. But this conception, though never denied, is sometimes apt to be forgotten in the course of that process of more and more minute analysis by which, for simplicityãs sake, we seek to unravel the intricacies of a complex organism.
We tend, as we analyse a thing into its parts or into its properties, to magnify these, to exaggerate their apparent independence, and to hide from ourselves (at least for a time) the essential integrity and individuality of the composite whole. We divide the body into its organs, the skeleton into its bones, as in very much the same fashion we make a subjective analysis of the mind, according to the teachings of psychology, into component factors: but we know very well that judgment and knowledge, courage or gentleness, love or fear, have no separate existence, but are somehow mere manifestations, or imaginary co-efficients, of a most complex integral. And likewise, as biologists, we may go so far as to say that even the bones themselves are only in a limited and even a deceptive sense, separate and individual things. The skeleton begins as a continuum, and a continuum it remains all life long. The things that link bone with bone, {713} cartilage, ligaments, membranes, are fashioned out of the same primordial tissue, and come into being pari passu, with the bones themselves. The