Ciui'. II. SPECIES. 167 



species may originate at the same time in different localities, these first repre- 

 sentatives of each species, at least, were not connected by sexual derivation ; and as 

 this applies equally to any first pair, this fancied test criterion of specific identity 

 must at all events be given up, and with it goes also the pretended real exist- 

 ence of the species, in contradistinction from the mode of existence of genera, 

 fiunilies, orders, classes, and t3-pes ; for what really exists are individuals, not species. 

 We may at the utmost consider individuals as representatives of species, but no one 

 individual nor any number of individuals represent its species only, without repre- 

 senting also at tlie same time, as we have seen above (Sect. I. to V.), its genus, its 

 family, its order, its class, its type. 



Before attempting to prove the whole of this proposition, I will first con- 

 sider the characters of the individual animals. Their existence is scarcely limited 

 as to time and space within definite and appreciable limits. No one nor all of 

 them represent fully, at any particular time, their species; they are always only the 

 temporary representatives of the species, inasmuch as each species exists longer in 

 nature than an}- of its individuals. All the individuals of any or of all species 

 now existing are only the successors of other individuals which have gone before, 

 and the predecessors of the next generations; they do not constitute the species, 

 they represent it. The species is an ideal entity, as much as the genus, the family, 

 the order, the class, or the type ; it continues to exist, while its representatives 

 die, generation after generation. But these representatives do not simply repre- 

 sent what is specific in the individual, they exhibit and reproduce in the sjime 

 manner, generation after generation, all that is generic in them, all that charac- 

 terizes the family, the order, the class, the branch, with the same fulness, the 

 same constancy, the same precision. Species then exist in nature in the same 

 manner as any other groups, they are quite as ideal in their mode of existence 

 as genera, families, etc., or quite as real. But individuals truly exist in a difll'r- 

 ent way ; no one of them exhibits at one time all the characteristics of the species, 

 even though it be hermaphrodite, neither do any two represent it, even though 

 the species be not polymorjjhous, for individuals have a growth, a youth, a mature 

 age, an old age, and are bound to some limited home during their lifetime. 

 It is true species are also limited in their existence; but for our purpose, we can 

 consider these limits as boundless, inasmuch as we have no means of fixing their 

 duration, either for the past geological ages, or for the present period, whilst 

 the short cycles of the life of individuals are easily measurable quantities. Now 

 as truly as individuals, while they exist, represent their species for the time being, 

 and do not constitute them, so tndy do these same individuals represent at the 

 same time their genus, their family, their order, their class, and their type, the 

 characters of which they bear as indelibly as those of the species. 



