376 Notices respecting New Books. 



system, or assemblage of observed truths, so produced, is, in the 

 language of science, the natural system. Thus what we call the 

 " Copernican System" of nature, (truly, be it observed, a natural 

 system,) is not the actual assemblage of planetary bodies circulating 

 round the sun, of which our planet forms a part, but it is a represen- 

 tation of it, exactly corresponding to the truth ; being all that man 

 can know of the reality. We make these remarks in this place, be- 

 cause much needless misapprehension, and also much unprofitable 

 discussion, have taken place on this part of the subject, and on the 

 right use of the phrase " the natural system". The expression, by 

 man, of the truths he has discovered respecting the system of nature, 

 if that expression be itself true, is, in the just and legitimate sense of 

 the term, " the natural system''^ being all that a finite being can know 

 or possess of it. 



We further maintain that this is the sense, and the only sense, in 

 which the phrase " the natural system", and other equivalent terms, 

 have ever been used by Mr. Macleay and the naturalists of the mo- 

 dern British School of Zoology, of which he is the founder ; and that 

 it is the sense, and the only sense, of that phrase, and of the allu- 

 sions to the same subject, as employed in the extracts cited by Mr. 

 Rennie, in the page now before us. 



In the extract from the review in the Zoological Journal, Mr. Mac- 

 leay is characterized as " that profound zoologist who has succeeded 

 more effectually than any of his predecessors in unravelling the intri- 

 cacies of the system pursued by Nature in the distribution of the 

 animal kingdom". What can be more explicit than this ? the very 

 identical system propounded by Mr. Macleay is not regarded as being 

 " the system pursued by nature", but he is said to have been more 

 successful than his predecessors in unravelling the intricacies of that 

 system ; just as we might say that Haiiy was more successful than his 

 predecessors in unravelling the intricacies of the system "pursued by 

 nature" in the production of crystallized minerals j or that Mr. Dal- 

 ton has been more successful than his predecessors in unravelling the 

 intricacies of the system "pursued by nature" in the constitution of 

 chemical combinations. 



Mr. Rennie's statement insinuates, though it does not broadly af- 

 firm, that Mr. Macleay identifies his views with the actual system of 

 nature, as existing in nature ; now this we positively deny, and we 

 deny too, that such a sense can be fairly or honestly extracted from 

 the passages quoted. After having examined the preface to the Hora 

 EntomnlogiccE , from which Mr. Rennie's first two quotations are made, 

 we affirm that no approach to such an identification is contained in 

 it. The reader will observe that in these passages Mr. Macleay does 

 not once mention his own views, but merely places in apposition "an 

 artificial system" (understanding thereby any such system) and "the 

 natural system " — " the plan of the creation itself — the work'of an 

 all-wise, all-powerful Deity". But he would suppose, from the con- 

 nection in which the extracts are introduced by Mr. Rennie, that 

 where "the natural system" is mentioned in them, Mr. Macleay 

 means his own individual views. Than this, however, nothing can 



be 



