DIVISION AND CLA SSIFICA TION. 1 2 9 



deavour to classify, according to their general resemblances, the 

 objects of visible nature of the material universe, animate and 

 inanimate (as distinct from the artificial things produced by, and 

 under the control of, our own activity) we feel that we are not 

 inventing classes, or constructing grounds of division, but rather 

 discovering classes by recognizing (in the existing resemblances 

 and affinities of the objects of animate and inanimate nature) 

 grounds of division already existing there. We feel that we are 

 following nature, that nature itself has differentiated class from 

 class, roughly, perhaps, but very extensively, if not indeed uni 

 versally, in every domain. And this is why we describe as 

 &quot;natural&quot; the classification which aims at following the broad 

 lines of demarcation that are undeniably traced out between 

 things independently of our own activity, whether mental or 

 physical. Such classes, moreover, we call Natural Kinds the 

 species infimae of the Scholastics (46, 52). If we compare them 

 with the artificial classes resulting from grounds of division de 

 liberately chosen for some special purpose, we shall find that 

 while the latter, or artificial, classes differ from one another merely 

 by the attribute we have chosen as when names differ in not be 

 ginning with the same letter, or flowers, by having or not having 

 a certain colour, and while nothing further can be predicated of 

 the things on account of such a basis of difference, the former, 

 or natural, kinds differ very much in many ways, by a deep and 

 comparatively unexplored mine of distinguishing characteristics, 1 

 the gradual analysis of which will enable us to predicate very 

 much about the classes so divided. 2 



It used to be commonly believed by natural scientists that in the animal 

 and vegetable kingdoms these &quot; natural kinds &quot; were the respective groups 

 which came by organic descent from first representatives or pairs brought 

 into existence originally by distinct acts of creation. 3 This belief was con 

 firmed by the comparatively fixed character of such &quot; natural kinds &quot; ; for 



1 Which appear as &quot; new &quot; or &quot; non-continuous &quot; differentiae in our subdivisions 

 (62, R. I.). 



2 &quot; According to Mill s well-known analogy, what we find to be the boundary in 

 such cases as these is not so much a shallow trench which we can dig for ourselves, 

 but an apparently bottomless crevasse which has been placed where we find it by 

 nature.&quot; VENN, op. cit., p. 335. 



3 In the inorganic or mineral kingdom, too, certain profoundly different &quot; types &quot; 

 or &quot;kinds &quot; of matter, were regarded as differing &quot; by nature &quot; ab initio, as having 

 been created &quot; different &quot;. These &quot; chemical elements &quot; their number still unknown 

 were regarded as irreducible to one another and underivable from one another ; 

 though they could combine with one another to form new kinds of material substance. 



VOL. I. 9 



