in the '' Dictionnaire des Sciences Naturelles.''^ 99 



equally admitted that in generalizing the groups of Natural His- 

 tory, the naturalist has a view to the apparent combinations formed 

 by nature, according to which he endeavours to regulate his general 

 ideas. " I would not here be thought," continues Mr. Locke, 

 "to forget, much less to deny, that nature in the production of 

 things makes several of them alike: there is nothing more ob- 

 vious, especially in the races of animals, and of things propagated 

 by seed. But yet, I think, we may say the sorting them under 

 names is the workmanship of the understanding, taking occasion 

 from the similitude it observes among them, to make abstract gene- 

 ral ideas, and set them up in the mind, with names annej^ed to 

 them as patterns or forms (for in that sense the word form has a 

 very proper signification) to which as particular things existing 

 are found to agree, so they come to be of that species, have that 

 denomination, or are put into that classis."*— " This then, in 

 short, is the case ; nature makes many particular things which do 

 agree one way with another in many sensible qualities, and pro- 

 bably too in their internal frame and constitution : but it is not 

 this real essence that distinguishes them into species; it is men, 

 who, taking occasion from the qualities they find united in them, 

 and wherein they observe often several individuals to agree, range 

 them into sorts, in order to their naming, for the convenience of 

 comprehensive signs. — Nature in the constant productions of par- 

 ticular beings make them not always new and various, but very 

 much alike and of kin one to another : but I think it is neverthe- 

 less true that the boundaries of the species whereby men sort them 

 are made by men. — So that we may truly say, such a manner of 

 sorting things is the workmanship of raan."+ 



* lb. Book 3. chapt. 3. § 13. Works. Vol. 11. p. 166. 



+ lb. Book 3. chapt. 6. § 36. 37. Works. Vol. II. p. 219. See also Book 3. 

 fj 30. Works. Vol. II. pp. 213 — 214. Mr. Locke was no professed naturalist; 

 — and yet there are observations on nature scattered throughout his works 

 which would do honour to systematists of the highest reputation in our 

 science. The mode in which he alludes to the chain of beings extending 

 throughout the universe, {lb. c. 3. § 12. p. 202.] the imperceptible gradations 

 by which they are united together, and the impossibility of drawing decided 

 lines of demarcation between them might be studied with advantage by those 

 writers who insist upon their groups being founded on decided distinctions. 



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