48 THE PLANT WORLD 



It is in connection with Jeremy Bentliam's procedure that Mill 

 refers to the benefits he derived from this study. Bentham had applied 

 in a scientific form the happiness principle of the utilitarian philosophy 

 to the morality of actions, taking up their consequences under various 

 classes and orders and analyzing them. He was most of all struck by it 

 in the classification of offences. " Logic and the dialectics of Plato, 

 which liad formed so large a part of my previous training, had given me 

 a strong relish for accurate classification. This taste had been strength- 

 ened and enlightened by the study of botany on the principles of what 

 is called the Natural Method, which I had taken up with great zeal, 

 though only as an amusement, during mj'^ stay in France ; and when I 

 found scientific classification applied to the great and complex subject of 

 Punishable Acts, under the guidance of the ethical principle of Pleasura- 

 ble and Painful Consequences, followed out in the method of detail in- 

 troduced into these subjects by Bentham, I felt taken up to an eminence 

 from which I could survey a vast mental domain, and see stretching out 

 into the distance intellectual results beyond all computation."* 



Mill refers to this subject in another work, his "System of Logic." 

 In the fourth book of this treatise the operations subsidiary to induc- 

 tion are considered under various heads, including those on the language 

 of science, meaning of terms, terminology, nomenclature and classifica- 

 tion. Here, as well as in other places in the work, Mill shows how he 

 made use of his botanical acquisitions by frequent examples employed 

 to enforce his ideas, though other branches of natural science are also 

 placed under tribute. Having stated in one of his chapters that the 

 scientific arrangements of organic nature have hithei-to afforded the only 

 complete examples of the principles of classification, and are just as 

 useful in art, business, or other matters, in bringing the parts of an 

 extensive subject into mental co-ordination, he closes with the following 

 significant passage : " The proper arrangement, for example, of a code 

 of laws, depends on the same scientific conditions as the classifications 

 in natural history ; nor could there be a better preparatory discipline 

 for that important function than the study of the principles of a natural 

 arrangement, not only in the abstract, but in their actual application to 

 the class of phenomena for which they were first elaborated, and which 

 are still the best school for learning their use. Of this the great 

 authority on codification, Bentham, was perfectly aware ; and his early 

 Fragment on Government, the admirable introduction to a series of writ- 

 ings unequaled in their department, contains clear and just views (as 

 far as they go) on the meaning of a natural arrangement, such as could 



*Miirs Autobiography, p. 65. 



