256 SPECULATIVE SCIENCE 



and will render the task of classification, if attempted, more and 

 more difficult. 



Legal difficulties furnish another illustration. Does a parti- 

 cular case fall within a particular statute ? is it ruled by this or 

 that precedent ? The number of statutes or groups is limited ; 

 the number of possible combinations of events almost unlimited. 

 Hence, as before, the uncertainty which group a special com- 

 bination shall be classed within. Yet new combinations being 

 doubtful cases, are so precisely because they are intermediate 

 between others already known. 



It might almost be urged that all the difficulties of reasoning 

 and all differences of opinion might be reduced to difficulties of 

 classification, that is to say, of determining whether a given 

 minor is really included in a certain major proposition and of 

 discovering the major proposition or genus we are in want of. 

 As trivial instances, take the docketing of letters or making 

 catalogues of books. How difficult it is to devise headings, and 

 how difficult afterwards to know under what head to place your 

 book. The most arbitrary rule is the only one which has a 

 chance of being carried out with absolute certainty. 



Yet while these difficulties meet us wherever we turn, in 

 chemistry, in mechanics, law, or mere catalogues of heterogene- 

 ous objects, we are asked to feel surprise that we cannot docket 

 off creation into neat rectangular pigeon-holes, and we are 

 offered a special theory of transmutation, limited to organic 

 beings, to account for a fact of almost universal occurrence. 



To resume this argument : Attention has been drawn to 

 the fact that when a complete set of combinations of certain ele- 

 ments is formed according to a given law, they will necessarily 

 be limited in number, and form a certain sequence, passing from 

 one extreme to the other by successive steps. 



Organised beings may be regarded as combinations, either of 

 the elementary substances used to compose them, or of the parts 

 recurring in many beings ; for instance, of breathing organs, 

 apparatus for causing blood to circulate, organs of sense, repro- 

 duction, &c., in animals. The conclusion is drawn that we can 

 feel 110 reasonable surprise at finding that species should form a 

 graduated series which it is difficult to group as genera, or that 

 varieties should be hard to group into various distinct species. 



