452 ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



that minerals and the elemental substances can be thus ar- 

 ranged. In this case there is of course no relation to gene- 

 alogical succession, and no cause can at present be assigned 

 for their falling into groups. But with organic beings the 

 case is different, and the view above given accords with their 

 natural arrangement in group under group; and no other 

 explanation has ever been attempted. 



Naturalists, as we have seen, try to arrange the species, 

 genera, and families in each class, on what is called the 

 Natural System, But what is meant by this system? Some 

 authors look at it merely as a scheme for arranging together 

 those living objects which are most alike, and for separating 

 those which are most unlike ; or as an artificial method of 

 enunciating, as briefly as possible, general propositions, — 

 that is, by one sentence to give the characters common, foi; 

 instance, to all mammals, by another those common to all 

 carnivora, by another those common to the dog-genus, and 

 then, by adding a single sentence, a full description is given 

 of each kind of dog. The ingenuity and utility of this system 

 are indisputable. But many naturalists think that something 

 more is meant by the Natural System; they believe that it 

 reveals the plan of the Creator ; that unless it be specified 

 whether order in time or space, or both, or what else is meant 

 by the plan of the Creator, it seems to me that nothing is 

 thus added to our knowledge. Expressions such as that fa- 

 mous one by Linnaeus, which we often meet with in a more 

 or less concealed form, namely, that the characters do not 

 make the genus, but that the genus gives the characters, seem 

 to imply that some deeper bond is included in our classifica- 

 tions than mere resemblance. I believe that this is the case, 

 and that community of descent — the one known cause of close 

 similarity in organic beings — is the bond, which though ob- 

 served by various degrees of modification, is partially re- 

 vealed to us by our classifications. 



Let us now consider the rules followed in classification, 

 and the difficulties which are encountered on the view that 

 classification either gives some unknown plan of creation, or 

 is simply a scheme for enunciating general propositions and 

 of placing together the forms most like each other. It might 

 have been thought (and was in ancient times thought) that 



