98 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



sification is made by nature, the other by us for our convenience, he will be 

 right ; provided he means no more than this : Where a certain apparent 

 difference between things (though perhaps in itself of little moment) an- 

 swers to we know not what number of other differences, pervading not 

 only their known properties, but properties yet undiscovered, it is not op- 

 tional but imperative to recognize this difference as the foundation of a 

 specific distinction ; while, on the contrary, differences that are merely finite 

 and determinate, like those designated by the words white, black, or red, 

 may be disregarded if the purpose for which the classification is made does 

 not require attention to those particular properties. The differences, how- 

 ever, are made by nature, in both cases ; while the recognition of those dif- 

 ferences as grounds of classification and of naming, is, equally in both cases, 

 the act of man : only in the one case, the ends of language and of classifica- 

 tion would be subverted if no notice were taken of the difference, while in 

 the other case, the necessity of taking notice of it depends on the impor- 

 tance or unimportance of the particular qualities in which the difference 

 happens to consist. 



Now, these classes, distinguished by unknown multitudes of properties, 

 and not solely by a few determinate ones — which are parted off from one 

 another by an unfathomable chasm, instead of a mere ordinary ditch with 

 a visible bottom — are the only classes which, by the Aristotelian logicians, 

 were considered as genera or species. Differences which extended only to 

 a certain property or properties, and there terminated, they considered as 

 differences only in the accidents of things; but where any class differed 

 from other things by an infinite series of differences, known and unknown, 

 they considered the distinction as one of Jcind, and spoke of it as being an 

 essential difference, which is also one of the current meanings of that vague 

 expression at the jji'esent day. 



Conceiving the schoolmen to have been justified in drawing a broad line 

 of separation between these two kinds of classes and of class-distinctions, I 

 shall not only retain the division itself, but continue to express it in their 

 language. According to that language, the proximate (or lowest) Kind to 

 which any individual is referrible, is called its species. Conformably to 

 this, Isaac Newton would be said to be of the species man. There are 

 indeed numerous sub-classes included in the class man, to which Newton 

 also belongs ; for example. Christian, and Englishman, and Mathematician. 

 But these, though distinct classes, are not, in our sense of the term, distinct 

 Kinds of men. A Christian, for example, differs from other human be- 

 ings ; but he differs only in the attribute which the word expresses, namely, 

 belief in Christianity, and whatever else that implies, either as involved in 

 the fact itself, or connected with it through some law of cause and effect. 

 We should never think of inquiring what properties, unconnected Avith 

 Christianity, either as cause or effect, are common to all Christians and pe- 

 culiar to them; while in regard to all Men, physiologists are perpetually 

 carrying on such an inquiry ; nor is the answer ever likely to be completed. 

 Man, therefore, we may call a species ; Christian, or Mathematician, we 

 can not. 



Note here, that it is by no means intended to imply that there may not 

 be different Kinds, or logical species, of man. The various races and tem- 

 peraments, the two sexes, and even the various ages, may be differences of 

 kind, within our meaning of the term. I do not say that they are so. For 

 in the progress of physiology it may almost be said to be made out, that 

 the differences which really exist between different races, sexes, etc., follow 



