10 ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION. 



Intellect from which it is derived. Such a suggestion 

 may, at first sight, appear irreverent. But, who is the 

 truly humble ? He who, penetrating into the secrets of 

 creation, arranges them under a formula, which he proudly 

 calls his scientific system ? or he who in the same pur- 

 suit recognizes his glorious affinity with the Creator, and 

 in deepest gratitude for so sublime a birthright strives to 

 be the faithful interpreter of that Divine Intellect with 

 whom he is permitted, nay, with whom he is intended, 

 according to the laws of his being, to enter into commu- 

 nion \ 



I confess that this question, as to the nature and 

 foundation of our scientific classifications, appears to me 

 to have the deepest importance ; an importance far greater, 

 indeed, than is usually attached to it. If it can be proved 

 that man has not invented, but only traced, this syste- 

 matic arrangement in nature ; that these relations and 

 proportions, which exist throughout the animal and vege- 

 table world, have an intellectual, an ideal connection, in 

 the mind of the Creator ; that this plan of creation, which 

 so commends itself to our highest wisdom, has not grown 

 out of the necessary action of physical laws, but was the 

 free conception of the Almighty Intellect, matured in his 

 thought before it was manifested in tangible external 

 forms ; if, in short, we can prove premeditation prior to 

 the act of creation, we have done, once and for ever, with 

 the desolate theory which refers us to the laws of matter 

 as accounting for all the winders of the universe, and 

 leaves us with no God but the monotonous, unvarying 

 action of physical forces, binding all things to their 

 inevitable destiny. 1 I think our science has now reached 



1 I allude here only to the doc- necessary to add, that there are phy- 

 triues of materialists. But I feel it sicists who might be shocked at the 



