Illustrations of Nature. 393 



There are three kingdoms established in nature ; the animal, 

 the vegetable, and the mineral ; and all natural existences are 

 presumed to be arranged, or arrangeable therein. '* The di- 

 vision of all natural objects into three great classes, is," says 

 Dr. Thompson, ** so simple, and, apparently, so consistent with 

 nature, that it must have originated at a very early period of 

 society." — *' Philosophers, therefore, almost by common con- 

 sent, have classed all natural productions according as they 

 appear to belong io the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral 

 or fossil kingdoms.'* But much, perhaps enough, has been 

 both done and written to prove, what even daily experience 

 would suffice to show, that this ordinary arrangement of phy- 

 sical existence is fundamentally erroneous ; and, although sanc- 

 tioned by very high authorities, and almost sanctified by imme- 

 morial usage, still the three kingdoms of nature are arbitrary 

 and incorrect divisions. Not that we mean to say that the 

 animal kingdom should be undistinguished from the vegetable, 

 and the vegetable from the mineral ; but that the ditierence 

 between the inorganic mineral, and the organic vegetable, is 

 greater than between the organic vegetable and the likewise 

 organic animal kingdom ; therefore, although correct in dis- 

 tinguishing the three, it is incorrect in the unnatural division ; 

 arbitrary, in confusing the rational or human with the sensual 

 or merely animal creature ; and defective, by excluding from any 

 place in the system of nature whatsoever, those inanimate yet 

 immaterial powers, and those superior grades of being, the 

 which, although not immediately evident to our senses, and 

 only known by their effects, undoubtedly do exist ; and if so, 

 they ought to be arranged in a scale of nature, or physical ex- 

 istence. Incorporeal spiritual beings are neither minerals, nor 

 vegetables, nor animals, and yet they do exist : again, attrac- 

 tion, light, heat, electricity, exist in nature, and are essential 

 parts thereof; are these either animals, or vegetables, or mi- 

 nerals ? As physical existences they should somewhere be 

 arranged : and hence the proposition by several philosophers, 

 to institute an igneous, and other kingdoms. 



But the ordinary distribution of the earlier naturalists hath so 

 generally obtained, and the application, at first sight, is so ap- 



