62 Boundary between Man (January, 
per saltum. We may take his two classes, A and B, and show 
him how the one fades into the other, not by steps, but con- 
tinuously and insensibly. We may point out that class B con- 
tains forms differing respectively from each other quiteas much 
as some of them do from A. We may prove that facts would 
warrant a division into three, or ten, or twenty groups, as well 
as, or better than, into two. Or we may show that the classifi- 
cation is, in its principles, arbitrary, unnatural, and ex parte 
hominis, resting not on any difference in the matters to be 
arranged, but merely on the relation they bear to the con- 
venience or prejudices of man, or of some particular section 
of men. All our explanations and objections will have little 
weight ; man will have his two classes, and no more. This 
inbred tendency to dualistic arrangements, or to dichotomy, 
as it is called by some writers, is probably founded upon a 
bodily fat. Man has two hands. Place before a child a 
quantity of flowers, shells, or pebbles, and he will generally 
scrape them into two heaps, to the right and to the left. 
This mode of proceeding follows man from childhood to 
maturity, from savagery to civilisation, and from objects 
materially under his hands to those presented to his mind 
only. Had he been a three- or a four-handed animal, his 
philosophies and his creeds would have been greatly modi- 
fied. Our binary or dualistic classifications, like our decimal 
arithmetic, have a morphological basis. 
Instances of these binary divisions are plentiful, from the 
categories of Aristotles, or even from an earlier date, 
down to the present day. Every science, every branch of 
erudition, has its antithetical couples strung together, like 
braces of birds in a poulterer’s shop. We speak of Ormuzd 
and Ahriman, of earth and heaven, of matter and spirit, of 
matter and force, of nature and man, of good and evil, of 
soul and body, of light and darkness, of heat and cold, of 
conductors and non-conduétors, of metals and metalloids, 
of acids and bases, of combustibles and supporters of com- 
bustion, of organic and inorganic, of animals and vegetables, 
of man and beast. 
The same love for dualism shows itself in the affairs of 
daily life, and in common conversation. Thus, the raw 
vouth and—oddly enough—the statesman divide mankind 
into friends and enemies; our divines have their saints and 
sinners, their church and world, and other antitheses not a 
few ; our moralists enlarge on vice and virtue; our political 
and social orators have much to say concerning order and 
progress, liberalism and conservatism, capital and labour. 
We speak of white men and men of colour, forgetting that 
