72 ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION 



On the contrary, when acknowledging an intellectual conception, 

 as the preliminary step in the existence not only of all organized 

 beings, but of everything in nature, how natural to find that while 

 diversity is introduced in the plan, in the complication and the de- 

 tails of structure of animals, their relations to the surrounding media 

 are equally diversified, and consequently the same functions may 

 be performed by the most different apparatus! 



SECTION XVII 

 RELATIONS OF INDIVIDUALS TO ONE ANOTHER 



The relations in which individuals of the same species of animals 

 stand to one another are not less determined and fixed than the rela- 

 tions of species to the surrounding elements, which we have thus far 

 considered. The relations which individual animals bear to one an- 

 other are of such a character that they ought long ago to have been 

 considered as proof sufficient that no organized being could ever have 

 been called into existence by another agency than the direct inter- 

 vention of a reflective mind. It is in a measure conceivable that phy- 

 sical agents might produce something like the body of the lowest 

 kinds of animals or plants, and that under identical circumstances 

 the same thing may have been produced again and again, by the 

 repetition of the same process; but that upon closer analysis of the 

 possibilities of the case it should not have at once appeared how 

 incongruous the further supposition is, that such agencies could 

 delegate the power of reproducing what they had just called into 

 existence, to those very beings, with such limitations that they could 

 never reproduce anything but themselves, I am at a loss to under- 

 stand. It will no more do to suppose that from simpler structures 

 such a process may end in the production of the most perfect, as 

 every step implies an addition of possibilities not even included in 

 the original case. Such a delegation of power can only be an act of 



efforts may appear like fighting against windmills, I shall not regret having spent so 

 much labor in urging my fellow-laborers in a right direction; but at the same time 

 I must protest now and forever against the bigotry spreading in some quarters, which 

 would press upon science doctrines not immediately flowing from scientific premises 

 and check its free progress. 



