[In logical order should here come the application of these First Principles to Inorganic Nature. But this great division it is proposed to pass over: partly because, even without it, the scheme is too extensive; an partly because the interpretation of Organic Nature after the proposed method, is of more immediate importance. The second work of the series will therefore be — ]
THE PRINCIPLES OF BIOLOGY.
Vol. I.
Part I. The Data of Biology. — Including those general truths of Physics and Chemistry with which rational Biology must set out.
II. The Inductions of Biology. — A statement of the leading generalizations which Naturalists, Physiologists, and Comparative Anatomists, have established.
III. The Evolution of Life. — Concerning the speculation commonly known as “The Development Hypothesis” — its à priori and à posteriori evidences.
Vol. II.
IV. Morphological Development. — Pointing out the relations that are everywhere traceable between organic forms and the average of the various forces to which they are subject; and seeking in the cumulative effects of such forces a theory of the forms.
V. Physiological Development. — The progressive differentiation of functions similarly traced; and similarly interpreted as consequent upon the exposure of different parts of organisms to different sets of conditions.
VI. The Laws of Multiplication. — Generalizations respecting the rates of reproduction of the vai'ious classes of plants and animals; followed by an attempt to show the dependence of these variations upon certain necessary causes.[1]
- ↑ The ideas to be developed in the second volume of the Principles of Biology the writer has already briefly expressed in sundry Review-Articles. Part IV. will work out a doctrine suggested in a paper on “The Laws of Organic Form,” published in the Medico-Chirurgical Review for January, 1859. The germ of Part V. is contained in the essay on “Transcendental Physiology:” See Essays, pp. 280-90. And in Part VI. will be unfolded certain views crudely expressed in a “Theory of Population,” published In the Westminster Review for April 1852.
