It is only when the mind passes beyond this condition that it begins to evolve science. When simple curiosity passes into the love of knowledge as such, and the gratification of the æsthetic sense of the beauty of completeness and accuracy seems more desirable than the easy indolence of ignorance; when the finding out of the causes of things becomes a source of joy, and he is counted happy who is successful in the search; common knowledge of nature passes into what our forefathers called Natural History, from whence there is but a step to that which used to be termed Natural Philosophy, and now passes by the name of Physical Science.
In this final stage of knowledge, the phenomena of nature are regarded as one continuous series of causes and effects; and the ultimate object of science is to trace out that series, from the term which is nearest to us, to that which is at the furthest limit accessible to our means of investigation.
The course of nature as it is, as it has been, and as it will be, is the object of scientific inquiry; whatever lies beyond, above, or below this, is outside science. But the philosopher need not despair at the limitation of his field of labour: in relation to the human mind Nature is boundless; and, though nowhere inaccessible, she is everywhere unfathomable. {4}
The Biological Sciences embody the great multitude of truths which have been ascertained respecting living beings; and as there are two chief kinds of living things, animals and plants, so Biology is, for convenience sake, divided into two main branches, Zoology and Botany.
Each of these branches of Biology has passed through the three stages of development, which are common to all the sciences; and, at the present time, each is in these different stages in different minds. Every country boy possesses more or less information respecting the plants and animals which come under his notice, in the stage of common knowledge; a good many persons have acquired more or less of that accurate, but necessarily incomplete and unmethodised knowledge, which is understood by Natural History; while a few have reached the purely scientific stage, and, as Zoologists and Botanists, strive towards the perfection of Biology as a branch of Physical Science.
Historically, common knowledge is represented by the allusions to animals and plants in ancient literature; while Natural History, more or less grading into Biology, meets us in the works of Aristotle, and his continuators in the Middle Ages, Rondoletius, Aldrovandus, and their contemporaries and successors. But the conscious attempt to construct a complete science of Biology hardly dates further back than Treviranus and Lamarck, at the beginning of this century, while it has received its strongest impulse, in our own day, from Darwin. {5}
My purpose, in the present work, is to exemplify the general truths respecting the development of zoological science which have just been stated by the study of a special case; and, to this end, I have selected an animal, the Common Crayfish, which, taking it altogether, is better fitted for my purpose than any other.
It is readily obtained,[1] and all the most important points of its construction are easily deciphered; hence, those who read what follows will have no difficulty in ascertaining whether the statements correspond with facts or not. And unless my readers are prepared to take this much trouble, they may almost as well shut the book; for nothing is truer than Harvey’s dictum, that those who read without acquiring distinct images of the things about which they read, by the help of their own senses, gather no real knowledge, but conceive mere phantoms and idola.
[1] If crayfish are not to be had, a lobster will be found to answer to the description of the former, in almost all points; but the gills and the abdominal appendages present differences; and the last thoracic somite is united with the rest in the lobster. (See Chap. V.)