OF BARON CUVIER. 23 



on the contrary, consider each being, each group of beings, 

 in itself, and in the character it sustains by its properties and 

 organization, and abstract none of its relations or connexions 

 with other beings, whether they be near or remote. 



When this mode of viewing animal nature is once at- 

 tained, the difficulties disappear, and nature seems to assume 

 a spontaneous arrangement in the eye of the naturalist ; our 

 artificial systems attempt only to fix the nearest relations ; 

 they seek merely to place one being between two others, and 

 contrive to be ever at fault ; true method sees each being in 

 the middle of all the others, and shows all the radiations that 

 link it more or less intimately in the vast web of organic 

 nature ; and thus alone we acquire enlarged ideas, worthy of 

 that nature and of nature's God ; but ten or twenty rays will 

 be often insufficient to express these multifarious relations. 

 It is therefore in the descriptions, that the idea to be formed 

 of the degrees of organization is to be sought, and not at all 

 in the place assigned to the species ; not that it is meant to 

 be inferred, that there is no classification possible, or that 

 species should not be formed into groups, and embraced in 

 definitions. On the contrary, these approximations are so 

 real, and our understanding is so powerfully inclined to them, 

 that in all ages even the vulgar have formed their genera, as 

 well as naturalists. 



Therefore, what nature assimilates we have approxi- 

 mated, without forcing into the groups beings that do not 

 belong to them ; and we make no scruple, after having arranged 

 together all the species, for instance, of a well-defined genus, 

 or all the genera which admit of being formed into a clearly 

 circumscribed family, to leave out one or more isolated 

 species or genera, which do not link themselves naturally with 

 the others; preferring these kinds of irregularities, if they 

 deserve that name, to misleading the reader, by suffering 



