94 ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION. 



animals of different types must produce in each peculiar 

 organs, and not to perceive that such an assumption 

 implies the very existence of these animals independently 

 of the physical agents. But this mistake recurs so con- 

 stantly in discussions upon this and similar topics, that, 

 trivial as it is, it requires to be rebuked. 1 On the con- 

 trary, when acknowledging an intellectual conception, as 

 the preliminary step in the existence not only of all or- 

 ganized beings, but of everything in nature, how natural 

 it is to find, that, while diversity is introduced into the 

 plan, the complication, and the details of structure of 

 animals, their relations to the surrounding media are 

 equally diversified, and consequently that the same func- 

 tions may be performed by the most different apparatus ! 



SECTION XVII. 



RELATIONS OF INDIVIDUALS TO ONE ANOTHER. 



The relations in which individuals of the same species 

 of animals stand to one another are no less determined 

 and fixed than the relations of species to the surrounding 

 elements, which we have thus far considered. The rela- 

 tions which individual animals bear to one another are of 

 such a character, they they ought long ago to have been 

 considered as sufficient proof that no organized being 

 could ever have been called into existence by other 

 agency than by the direct intervention of a reflective mind. 



1 I hope the day is not far distant having spent so much labour in urg- > 



when zoologists and botanists will ing my fellow labourers in a right 



equally disclaim having shared in direction ; but, at the same time, I 



the physical doctrines more or less must protest now and for ever against 



now prevalent, respecting the origin the bigotry spreading in some quar- 



and existence of organized beings, ters, which would press upon science 



Should the time come when my pre- doctrines not immediately flowing 



sent efforts may appear like fighting from scientific premises, and check 



against windmills, I shall not regret its free progress. 



