ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF BOOKS. 421 



study of the organic, might be placed either tit the cud of the cue or at the 

 beginniug of the other class. Its essential spirit allies it with Class IV of t)ie 

 organic world. Its literature, however, is so entirely geological that no room 

 is left for questioning, and it cannot even form a separate division, but nmst 

 be grouped Avith geology, in 3^. 



Class IV. Natural history (4^) should be called biology, or the science of 

 organic life, as chemistry is the science of inorganic life. Its specifications 

 follow in botany (4^ a), zoology (4'' a), and human physiology (4'* a), with 

 which again are grouped their practices in life, agriculture (4^ a), acclimation 

 (4^ b), and surgery, medicine, &c., (4' u.) But there are many books of min- 

 gled botany and zoology, especially those written in or previous to the revival 

 of natural scie'nce in the eighteenth century, which either discuss the nature 

 of life, or systematize the phenomena of life in so general a way that it seems 

 best to retain the old name for the science of organic life in general for the first 

 division of the class, and to put all such memoirs and synopses into it. 



It would have been easy to have adopted the name of physiology for this 

 leading division, had it not become engaged to a special branch of biology, 

 although some have endeavored to distinguish physiology from human physi- 

 ology. . The name, zoology, has been still more closely confined to a specialty, 

 and cannot now be released to assume its natural place at the head of the sciences 

 of organic life. Natural history, therefore, vague and unsatisfactory as the 

 name is, seems to be the best within our reach to designate not only purely 

 biological works, but works of general description and classification. Its sub- 

 divisions, then, ought to be into three, natural history societies' publications, 

 biological treatises, and principles of classification of genera and species. 



Acclimation (4'' b), with the few books treating of it, was at first considered 

 only an insignificant or accidental part of agriculture. But having attained the 

 )-ank of a self-sustaining science, lackeyed by one of the most powerful societies 

 in France, la Societe Zoologique d'Acclimatation, it must be allowed to assume 

 its normal j)lace beside zoology, making this fourth class the most symmetrical 

 one of the eight. 



An apparent anomaly, however, will be noticed by naturalists in the order of 

 subjects under some of the divisions, such as botany and zoology; they de- 

 scend instead of ascending. But this is an inherent and unconquerable difficulty 

 in the sciences themselves, forcing itself upon the classification of their books. 

 In geology, especially, the order of time and of naming description is from lower 

 to higher rocks; but the order of illustration and of minute description is from 

 above downwards, both in nature, in the field-book, and on the printed page. 

 Hugh Miller has made it an argument for the orthodoxy of the fall of man and 

 eternal damnation, that nature involves this very anomaly, and has seen herself 

 obliged by the creative destiny to usher in her several creations of higher and 

 liigher types per salliim, only to mortify herself with the sight of their relajises 

 into degradation and decrepitude, followed by extinction. 



Class V. With the completion of the physico-organic we enter the organo- 

 spiritual range of sciences. And here is encountered perhaps the principal 

 difficulty in developing the whole theme on a consistently advancing and ascend- 

 ing scale. We have seen it take root in the abstract soil of number, form its 

 stem and branches of the inorganic world, blossom with forms of organic life, 

 and bear its fruit in man. There remains the discussion of the varieties, the 

 uses, and the reproduction of this fruit. A new theme thus arises out of the 

 body of the old, like a star-fish from a jelly-fish, to repeat, with a distincter and 

 nobler pronunciation, the fading outlines of the mother theme. The practical 

 question may be put in several ways. 



We have ceased to regard mankind physiologically as animal. How shall Ave 

 now consider man as ])ersonal? Shall we consider him, first, intellectually as a 

 mechanic, then asthetically as an artist, then morally as an immortal ? Many 



