LOGIC OF CONCEPTS, 79 



ment. In other words, this earh'est conceptual classification 

 was little more than the verbal statement of a receptual 

 classification. But when the science of comparative anatomy 

 was inaugurated by the Greeks, a much more conceptual 

 classification of animals emerged — although the importance 

 of anything like a systematic arrangement of the animal 

 kingdom as a whole was so little appreciated that it does not 

 appear to have been attempted, even by Aristotle. For, 

 marvellous as is the advance of conceptual grouping here 

 displayed by him, he confined himself to drawing anatomical 

 comparisons between one group of animals and another ; he 

 neither had any idea of group subordinate to group which 

 afterwards constituted the leading principle of taxonomic 

 research, nor does he anywhere give a tabular statement of 

 his own results, such as he could scarcely have failed to give 

 had he appreciated the importance of classifying the animal 

 kingdom as a systematic whole. Lastly, since the time of Ray 

 the best thought of the best naturalists has been bestowed upon 

 this work, with the result that conceptual ideation has con- 

 tinuously ascended through wider and wider generalizations, or 

 generalizations more and more chastened by the intentional and 

 combined accumulations of knowledge. How enormous, then, is 

 the contrast between the first simple attempt at classification 

 as made by the early Jews, and the elaborate body of abstract 

 thought which is presented by the taxonomic science of 

 to-day. 



Similar illustrations might be drawn from any of the other 

 departments of conceptual evolution, because everywhere such 

 evolution essentially consists in the achievement of ideal 

 integrations further and further removed from simple per- 

 ceptions. Or, as Sir W. Hamilton puts it, "by a first general- 

 ization we have obtained a number of classes of resembling 

 individuals. But these classes we can compare together, 

 observe their similarities, abstract from their differences, and 

 bestow on their common circumstance a common name. On 

 the second classes we can again perform the same operation, 

 and thus, ascending through the scale of general notions, 



