ON THE ART OF CLASSIFYING. 29 
properties serve us for finding out the name, whereas in ordinary 
dictionaries the known name serves to acquaint us with the pro- 
perties. That a system may serve its purpose, and supply an easy 
means of finding the name, it must be artificial, i.e. it must be 
taken from a single system of organs and their differences. The 
characters should be easy to find out, and be borrowed from ex- 
ternal parts. An example of such an artificial system is the 
sexual system of Linnzus. In the animal kingdom we have no 
such artificial system: most of the systems are mixed; neither 
entirely artificial nor entirely natural. 
For there is yet another kind of systems, called Natural systems 
(Method): of which the chief object is, not so much to find the 
names readily, as to unite in an unconstrained manner those 
natural products which, in the greatest number of respects, corre- 
spond. They are founded, not on a single organ or system of 
organs, but on the whole structure. If an object be seen only on 
one side, on the north or south, east or west, just so many partial 
representations of it will be obtained as there are points of view: 
but he only who observes it in all directions is able to form a 
judgment of its nature and being. This is the advantage of a 
natural method over artificial systems: it does not forget the center 
in the circumference, but comprising all the parts and properties 
of animals in its estimate, it allots to them a place in the arrange- 
ment according to their structure and to the importance which 
belongs to them in the economy of nature, and so combines them 
in a great organic whole}, 
A perfectly natural classification has not yet been discovered : 
but we must continue to search after it, and to collect its scattered 
fragments. It is, according to Linn.mus, the first object and the 
last of the hopes of the Botanist: it ought to be no less so of the 
Zoologist?. We please ourselves with the reflexion that we have 
approached nearer to this goal, now that men, especially in our 
century, have begun to investigate the internal structure of animals 
with the same curiosity and the same zeal with which, in the last 
century, after the example of Linnmus chiefly, they studied the 
1 See J. Sprx, Geschichte und Beurtheil ung aller Systeme in der Zoologie, Niirnberg, 
i811. 8vo. s. 8—rr. 
2 Philosophia botanica, § 77. 
