ON THE ART OF CLASSIFYING. 29 



properties serve us for rinding out the name, whereas in ordinary 

 dictionaries the known name serves to acquaint us with the pro- 

 perties. That a system may serve its purpose, and supply an easy 

 means of finding the name, it must be artificial, i. e. it must be 

 taken from a single system of organs and their differences. The 

 characters should be easy to find out, and be borrowed from ex- 

 ternal parts. An example of such an artificial system is the 

 sexual system of Linnaeus. In the animal kingdom we have no 

 such artificial system : most of the systems are mixed ; neither 

 entirely artificial nor entirely natural. 



For there is yet another kind of systems, called Natural systems 

 (Method): of which the chief object is, not so much to find the 

 names readily, as to unite in an unconstrained manner those 

 natural products which, in the greatest number of respects, corre- 

 spond. They are founded, not on a single organ or system of 

 organs, but on the whole structure. If an object be seen only on 

 one side, on the north or south, east or west, just so many partial 

 representations of it will be obtained as there are points of view : 

 but he only who observes it in all directions is able to form a 

 judgment of its nature and being. This is the advantage of a 

 natural method over artificial systems : it does not forget the center 

 in the circumference, but comprising all the parts and properties 

 of animals in its estimate, it allots to them a place in the arrange- 

 ment according to their structure and to the importance which 

 belongs to them in the economy of nature, and so combines them 

 in a great organic whole 1 . 



A perfectly natural classification has not yet been discovered: 

 but we must continue to search after it, and to collect its scattered 

 fragments. It is, according to LINNAEUS, the first object and the 

 last of the hopes of the Botanist : it ought to be no less so of the 

 Zoologist 2 . We please ourselves with the reflexion that we have 

 approached nearer to this goal, now that men, especially in our 

 century, have begun to investigate the internal structure of animals 

 with the same curiosity and the same zeal with which, in the last 

 century, after the example of LINNJEUS chiefly, they studied the 



1 See J. SPIX, Gesckichte und Beurtheilung atter Systeme in der Zoologie. Nurnberg, 

 1811. 8vo. s. 8 u. 



2 Philosophia botanica, 77. 



