SECTION II.
CURIOUS CASES PUBLISHED IN THE "PHILOSOPHICAL
TRANSACTIONS," 1793.
"The Universal Cause
Acts to one end, but acts by various laws."
Pope.
However paradoxical it may appear, it is not the less true, that nothing more teachingly impresses the inquirer into nature with the actual presence of general laws than the apparent exceptions to them. Finite capacities in dealing with the Infinite must of course encounter multitudes of facts, the meaning of which they cannot interpret—portions of the Divine Government, as Butler has said, which they do not as yet understand.
In philosophical investigations, these are properly regarded as facts which, in the present state of knowledge, cannot be made to fall under any of our very limited generalizations.
At one period, departures from the ordinary structure or form in animals were simply regarded as unintelligible abstractions, and no more philosophical expression was given to them than "Lusus Naturæ"—sports of Nature. Progressive science, however, has thrown considerable light on such phenomena, and invested many of them with a new interest.
Physiologists have not arrived at the explanation of all such facts; but much has been done by comparative anatomy to show that many of them are merely arrests of development, and cases of interference with the ordinary law.
That, in fact, they show the mutual harmony and connection of the laws of nature to be such, that the development of any one law implies the concurrence, so to speak, of some other, just as the successful incubation of an egg, or any other familiar fact, implies the presence of certain conditions. We cannot boil a drop of water without the concurrence of various laws: we say it boils ordinarily at 212° of Fahrenheit; but how many conditions this involves!