4 ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION 



of animals to one another and to the world in which they live, upon 

 which the natural system may be founded. 



In considering these various topics, I shall of necessity have to 

 discuss many questions bearing upon the very origin of organized 

 beings and to touch upon many points now under discussion among 

 scientific men. I shall, however, avoid controversy as much as pos- 

 sible and only try to render the results of my own studies and medi- 

 tations in as clear a manner as I possibly can in the short space of an 

 essay like this. 



There is no question in Natural History on which more diversi- 

 fied opinions are entertained than on that of Classification; not that 

 naturalists disagree as to the necessity of some sort of arrangement 

 in describing animals or plants, for since nature has become the ob- 

 ject of special studies it has been the universal aim of all naturalists 

 to arrange the objects of their investigations in the most natural 

 order possible. Even Buffon,^ who began the publication of his great 

 Natural History by denying the existence in nature of any thing like 

 a system, closed his work by grouping the birds according to certain 

 general features exhibited in common by many of them. It is true, 

 authors have differed in their estimation of the characters on which 

 their different arrangements are founded; and it is equally true that 

 they have not viewed their arrangements in the same light, some 

 having plainly acknowledged the artificial character of their systems, 

 while others have urged theirs as the true expression of the natural 

 relations which exist between the objects themselves. But, whether 

 systems were presented as artificial or natural, they have to this day 

 been considered generally as the expression of man's understanding 

 of natural objects, and not as a system devised by the Supreme Intel- 

 ligence and manifested in these objects.^ 



There is only one point in these innumerable systems on which 

 all seem to meet, namely, the existence in nature of distinct species 

 persisting with all their peculiarities, for a time at least; for even 



^ [Georges L. LeClerc de Buffon, 1707-1799.] 



^ The expressions constantly used with reference to genera and species and the higher 

 groups in our systems — as, Mr. A. has made such a species a genus; Mr. B. employs 

 this or that species to form his genus; and in which most naturalists indulge when 

 speaking of their species, their genera, their families, their systems — exhibit in an 

 unquestionable light the conviction, that such groups are of their own making; which 

 can, however, if the views I shall present below are at all correct, only be true in so 

 far as these groups are not true to nature. 



