Page:The Harveian oration ; delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, June 26th, 1879 (IA b24976465).pdf/23

 fest. The very first fact which strikes us is that the body is made up of two halves, that is, that the body is double, implying necessarily that the nerve centres are double, and all the senses double. We may perceive in this fact a wonderful adaptation of means to ends, and how a knowledge of space in its three dimensions is gained, not only by our possession of two arms, but by our two eyes and by our two ears. We can see at once the advantage of this duality, but we hesitate to stop at a teleological cause when we find a similar dual arrangement even in senseless objects, and are forced to recognise another law of nature, that of form. Morphological doctrines require us to regard the whole of nature's arrangements, and therefore in this very question of duality many a person before, and since, the time of Abraham Cowley must have been struck with the very close resemblance between the human head and many fruits, especially the walnut. Cowley had a smattering of anatomy besides being a poet, and describes how the nut has a soft covering or integument, then a hard shell or bone, lining which is a thick membrane or dura mater, followed by a thin skin or pia mater, covering the convo-