CLASSIFICATION By SERIES. 325 



is there that the effects which either depend upon it, 

 or depend upon the same causes with it, will also exist 

 in the greatest degree. It is there, consequently, and 

 only there, that those effects of it, or joint effects with 

 it, can become fully known to us; so that we may learn 

 to recognise their smaller degrees, or even their mere 

 rudiments, in cases in which the direct study would 

 have heen difficult or even impossible. Not to men- 

 tion that the phenomenon in its higher degrees may 

 be attended by effects or collateral circumstances which 

 in its smaller degrees do not occur at all., requiring for 

 their production in any sensible amount a greater degree 

 of intensity of the cause than is there met with. In 

 man, for example (the species in which both the pheno- 

 menon of animal and that of organic life exist in the 

 highest degree), many subordinate phenomena develop 

 themselves in the course of his animated existence, 

 which the inferior varieties of animals do not show. 

 The knowledge of these properties may nevertheless be 

 of great avail towards the discovery of the conditions 

 and laws of the general phenomenon of life, which 

 is common to man with those inferior animals. And 

 they are, even, rightly considered as properties of ani- 

 mated nature itself; because they may evidently be 

 affiliated to the general laws of animated nature; 

 because we may fairly presume that some rudiments 

 or feeble degrees of those properties would be recog- 

 nised in all animals by more perfect organs, or even 

 by more perfect instruments, than ours; and because 

 those may be correctly termed properties of a class, 

 which a thing exhibits exactly in proportion as it 

 belongs to the class, that is, in proportion as it pos- 

 sesses the main attributes constitutive of the class. 



4. It remains to consider how the internal dis- 



