24 ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION 



SECTION VI 



VARIOUS DEGREES AND DIFFERENT KINDS OF RELATIONSHIP 

 AMONG ANIMALS 



The degrees of relationship existing between different animals 

 are most diversified. They are not only akin as representatives of the 

 same species, bearing as such the closest resemblance to one another; 

 different species may also be related as members of the same genus, 

 the representatives of different genera may belong to the same family, 

 and the same order may contain different families, the same class 

 different orders, and the same type several classes. The existence of 

 different degrees of affinity between animals and plants which have 

 not the remotest genealogical connection, which live in the most 

 distant parts of the world, which have existed in periods long gone 

 by in the history of our earth, is a fact beyond dispute, at least, within 

 certain limits, no longer controverted by well informed observers. 

 Upon what can this be founded? Is it that the retentive capacity of 

 the memory of the physical forces at work upon this globe is such 

 that, after bringing forth a type according to one pattern in the in- 

 fancy of this earth, that pattern was adhered to under conditions, 

 no matter how diversified, to reproduce at another period something 

 similar, and so on, through all ages, until at the period of the estab- 

 lishment of the present state of things, all the infinitude of new 

 animals and new plants which now crowd its surface should be cast 

 in these four moulds, in such a manner as to exhibit, not^vithstand- 

 ing their complicated relations to the surrounding world, all those 

 more deeply seated general relations which establish among them 

 the different degrees of affinity we may trace so readily in all the 

 representatives of the same type? Does all this really look more like 

 the working of blind forces than like the creation of a reflective 

 mind establishing deliberately all the categories of existence we 

 recognize in nature, and combining them in that wonderful harmony 

 which unites all things into such a perfect system, that even to read 

 it as it is established, or even with all the imperfections of a transla- 

 tion, should be considered as the highest achievement of the matur- 

 es! genius? 



