M E T M E T 79 Recent Metal-Work. In modern Europe generally the arts of metal-working both as regards design and tech nical skill are not in a flourishing condition. The great bronze lions of the Nelson monument in London are a sad example of the present low state of the founder s art. Coarse sand-casting in England now takes the place of the delicate "cire perdue" process. Some attempts have lately been made in Germany to revive the art of good wrought-iron work. The Prussian gates, bought at a high price for the South Kensington Museum, are large and pretentious, but unfortunately are only of value as a warning to show what wrought iron ought not to be. Some English recent specimens of ham mered work are more hopeful, and show that one or two smiths are working in the right direction. Literature. PREHISTORIC : "Worsaae, Nordiske Oldsagcri Kjobcn- havn, 1854 ; Perrin, Etude prehistoriquc Age du bronze, 1870. CLASSICAL : Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, 1853 ; Lane s and Wilkinson s works on Ancient Egypt; Pliny, Natural History, book xxxiv. ; Brb ndsted, Den Fikoroniskc Cista, 1847 ; Daremberg, Dictionnaire des Antiquites, " Coelatura," in course of publication ; Gerhard, various monographs, 1843-67; Mailer, Etrusker, &c. , and other works ; Ciampi, Dell Antica Torcutica, 1815. MEDIAEVAL: Digby Wyatt, Metal- Work of the Middle Ages, 1849; Shaw, Orna mental Metal- Work, 1836 ; Drury Fortnum, S.K.M. Handbook of Bronzes, 1877 ; King, Orfevrerie et outrages en metal du moyen age, 1852-4; Hefner- Alteneck, Serrurerie du moyen age, 1869; Viollet-le-duc, Diet, du mobilier, "Serrurerie" and "Orfevrerie," 1858, &c. ; Lacroix, Tresor de S. Denis, and L Art du moyen <5gc (various dates); Karch, Die Rdthselbildcr an der Broncethurc zu Augsburg, 1869; Krug, Entwiirfe fur Gold-, Silbcr-, und Bronze- Arbeiter (no date); Linas, Orfevrerie Merovingienne, 1864, and Orfevrerie du XIII me Sieclc, 1856 ; Bordeaux, Serrurerie du moyen Age, 1858 ; Didron, Manuel des ceuvres de bronze et d or- fevrcrie du moyen age, 1859; Du Sommerard, Arts au moyen Age, 1838-46, and Music de Cluny, 1852; Durand, Tresor de Veglise de Xaint Marc a Venise, 1862; Albert Way, Gold Rctable of Basle, 1843; Rico y Sinobas, Trabctjos de me talcs, 1871; Blanchard, Fortes <lu Baptistere de Florence, 1858; Bock, Die Goldschmicdekunst des Mittelaltcrs, 1855, and Klrinodicn des Heil.-Romischcn Rcichcs ; Jouy, Lcs gemmes et les joyaux, 1865 ; Lu bke, Works of Peter Visschcr, 1877 ; Adelung, Die Thuren zu S. Sophia in Novgorod, 1824; Wanderer, Adam Krafft and his School, 1868; Nesbitt, "Bronze door of Gnesen Cathedral," Arch. Jour., vol. ix. ; Rossi, Treportedi bronzo di Pisa ; Digot, articles in Bulletin Monumental, }l s : *"-*; Catalogue of works of art in metal exhibited in 1861 at Ironmongers Hall ; Texicr, Diclionnaire d Orfevrerie 1857- Virgil Sohs, Designs for Gold- ami Silver-Smiths, 1512 (facsimile* reproduction, 1862). PRACTICAL TREATISES : Tlu-ophilus Dii-er- sarum Artium Schedula; Cellini, Trattati ddV Oreficeria e delln Scultura; Vasari, Trc Arti del Disegno, part ii., Milaneafs ed , 882; Gamier, Manuel du ciseleur, 1859. (j. H. M.) METAMORPHOSIS. This term has been employed in several distinct senses in biology. During the early part of the century it was constantly used to include the current morphological conceptions, as, for instance, of the parts of a flower as modified or " metamorphosed " leaves, or of the segments of a skull as modified vertebrae It is still frequently employed to denote that progressive change from the general to the special undergone by all developing tissues and organs (see BIOLOGY, EMBRYOLOGY), but in this sense is conveniently superseded by the term " differentiation." In the process of animal development, two types are broadly distinguishable, a fcetal type, in which development takes place wholly or in greater part either within the egg or within the body of the parent, and a larval type, in which the young are born in a condition more or less differing from that of the adult, while the adult stage again is reached in one of two ways, either by a process of gradual change, or by a succession of more or less rapid and striking transformations, to which the term metamorphosis is now usually restricted. Metamorphosis is generally regarded as having been brought about by the action of natural selection, partly in curtailing and reducing the phases of development (an obvious advantage in economy of both structural and functional change), and partly also in favouring the acquirement of such secondary characters as are advan tageous in the struggle for existence. Freshwater and terrestrial animals develop without metamorphosis much more frequently than marine members of the same group, a circumstance which has been variously explained. For details of metamorphoses see the articles on the various groups of animals; see also Balfour s Comparative Em- bryology, 1880-81. METAPHYSIC THE term metaphysic, originally intended to mark the place of a particular treatise in the collection of Aristotle s works, has, mainly owing to a misunderstanding, survived several other titles, such as " First Philosophy," "Ontology," and "Theology," which Aristotle himself used or suggested. Neo-Platonic mystics interpreted it as signifying that which is not merely "after" but " beyond " physics, and found in it a fit designation for a science which, as they held, could not be attained except by one who had turned his back upon the natural world. And writers of a different tendency in a later time gladly accepted it as a convenient nickname for theories which they regarded as having no basis in experience, in the same spirit in which the great German minister Stein used the analogous title of " metapolitics " for airy and unpractical schemes of social reform. A brief indication of the contents of Aristotle s treatise may enable us to give a general definition of the science which was first distinctly constituted by it, and to determine in what sense the subjects which that science has to consider are beyond nature and experience. For Aristotle, metaphysic is the science which has to do with Being as such, Being in general, as distinguished from the special sciences which deal with special forms of being. There are certain questions which, in Aristotle s view, we have a right to ask in regard to everything that ; presents itself as real. We may ask what is its ideal nature or definition, and what are the conditions of ite realization ; we may ask by what or whom it was produced, and for what end ; we may ask, in other words, for the formal and the material, for the efficient and the final causes of everything that is. These different questions point to different elements in our notion of Being, elements which may be considered in their general relations apart from any particular case of their union. These, therefore, the first philosophy must investigate. But, further, this science of being cannot be entirely separated from the science of knowing, but must determine at least its most general principles. For the science that deals with what is most universal in being is, for that very reason, dealing with the objects which are most nearly akin to the intelligence. These, indeed, are not the objects which are first presented to our minds ; we begin with the particular, not the universal, with a irpwrov r)[*w which is not irpwroy (j>vo-ci; but science reaches its true form only when the order of thought is made one with the order of nature, and the particular is known through the universal. Yet this- conversion or revolution of the intellectual point of view is not to be regarded as an absolute change from error to truth ; for Aristotle holds that nihil est in intellectu quod non prius in sensu, in the meaning that in sense perception
there is already the working of that discriminative intelli-