276 OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



Plants are not only real Kinds, but are probably,* all of 

 them, real lowest Kinds, Infimse Species ; which if we were 

 to subdivide, as of course it is open to us to do, into sub 

 classes, the subdivision would necessarily be founded on 

 definite distinctions, not pointing (apart from what may be 

 known of their causes or effects) to any difference beyond 

 themselves. 



In so far as a natural classification is grounded on real 

 Kinds, its groups are certainly not conventional; it is per 

 fectly true that they do not depend upon an arbitrary choice 

 of the naturalist. But it does not follow, nor, I conceive, is 

 it true, that these classes are determined by a type, and not 

 by characters. To determine them by a type would be as 

 sure a way of missing the Kind, as if we were to select a set 

 of characters arbitrarily. They are determined by characters, 

 but these are not arbitrary. The problem is, to find a few 

 definite characters which point to the multitude of indefinite 

 ones. Kinds are Classes between which there is an impas 

 sable barrier; and what we have to seek is, marks whereby we 

 may determine on which side of the barrier an object takes its 

 place. The characters which will best do this should be 

 chosen : if they are also important in themselves, so much the 

 better. When we have selected the characters, we parcel out 

 the objects according to those characters, and not, I conceive, 

 according to resemblance to a type. We do not compose the 

 species Ranunculus acris, of all plants which bear a satis 

 factory degree of resemblance to a model-buttercup, but of 

 those which possess certain characters selected as marks by 

 which we might recognise the possibility of a common 



* I say probably, not certainly, because this is not the consideration by 

 which a botanist determines what shall or shall not be admitted as a species. 

 In natural history those objects belong to the same species, which are, or con 

 sistently with experience might have been, produced from the same stock. But 

 this distinction, in most, and probably in all cases, happily accords with the 

 other. It seems to be a law of physiology, that animals and plants do really, 

 in the philosophical as well as the popular sense, propagate their kind ; trans 

 mitting to their descendants all the distinctions of Kind (down to the most 

 special or lowest Kind) which they themselves possess. 



