iMt'ERFECT BASIS OF HIS CLASSIFICATION. 295 



displayed in the natural language of the emotions, and 

 in the social phenomena that result from them, and those 

 subjectively displayed in the aspects the emotions assume 

 in an analytical consciousness. And the question is — Can 

 they be correctly grouped after this method ? 



We think not; and had Mr. Bain carried farther an idea 

 with which he has set out, he would probably have seen 

 that they cannot. As already said, he avowedly adopts 

 *' the natural-history-method : " not only referring to it in 

 his preface, but in his first chapter giving examples of 

 botanical and zoological classifications, as illustrating the 

 mode in which he proposes to deal with the emotions. 

 This we conceive to be a philosophical conception ; and we 

 have only to regret that Mr. Bain has overlooked some of 

 its most important imj^lications. For in what has essentially 

 consisted the progress of natural-history-classification ? In 

 the abandonment of grouping by external, conspicuous 

 characters ; and in the making of certain internal, but all- 

 essential characters, the bases of groups. Whales are not 

 now ranged along with fish, because in their general forms 

 and habits of life they resemble fish ; but they are ranged 

 with mammals, because the type of their organization, as 

 ascertained by dissection, corresponds with that of the mam- 

 mals. IsTo longer considered as sea-weeds in virtue of their 

 forms and modes of growth, zoophytes are now shown, by 

 examination of their economy, to belong to the animal 

 kingdom. 



It is found, then, that the discovery of real relation- 

 Bhips involves analysis. It has turned out that the earlier 

 classifications, guided by general resemblances, though 

 containing much truth, and though very useful provision- 

 ally, were yet in many cases radically wrong ; and that the 

 true affinities of organisms, and the true homologies of 

 their parts, are to be made out on'y by examining their 

 *jidden structures. Another fact of great significance io 



