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. Every realm of nature is marvellous: and as Heraclitus,
when the strangers who came to visit him found him warming himself
at the furnace in the kitchen and hesitated to go in, reported to have
bidden them not to be afraid to enter, as even in that kitchen
divinities were present, so we should venture on the study of every
kind of animal without distaste; for each and all will reveal to us
something natural and something beautiful. Absence of haphazard and
conduciveness of everything to an end are to be found in Nature's
works in the highest degree, and the resultant end of her
generations and combinations is a form of the beautiful.
If any person thinks the examination of the rest of the animal
kingdom an unworthy task, he must hold in like disesteem the study
of man. For no one can look at the primordia of the human frame-blood,
flesh, bones, vessels, and the like-without much repugnance. Moreover,
when any one of the parts or structures, be it which it may, is
under discussion, it must not be supposed that it is its material
composition to which attention is being directed or which is the
object of the discussion, but the relation of such part to the total
form. Similarly, the true object of architecture is not bricks,
mortar, or timber, but the house; and so the principal object of
natural philosophy is not the material elements, but their
composition, and the totality of the form, independently of which they
have no existence
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