8 MARXISM AND DARWINISM. 



know?" was answered. "At the time of creation God 

 created them all, each after its kind." This primitive 

 theory was in conformity with the experiences had 

 and with the oldest information that could be got. Ac- 

 cording to the information, all known plants and ani- 

 mals have always been the same. Scientifically, this 

 experience was thus expressed, "All kinds are invari- 

 able because the parents transmit their characteristics 

 to their children." 



There were, however, some peculiarities among 

 plants and animals which gradually forced a different 

 conception to be entertained. They so nicely let them- 

 selves be arranged into a system which was first set 

 up by the Swedish scientist Linnaeus. According to 

 this system, the animals are divided into main di- 

 visions ; these divisions are divided into classes, classes 

 into orders, orders into families, families into species, 

 each of which contain a few kinds. The more sem- 

 blance there is in their characteristics, the nearer they 

 stand towards each other in this system, and the 

 smaller is the group to which they belong. All the 

 animals classed as mammalian show the same general 

 characteristics in their bodily frame. The herbivorous 

 animals, and carnivorous animals, and monkeys, each 

 of which belongs to a different order, are again dif- 

 ferentiated. Bears, dogs, and cats, all of which are 

 rapacious animals, have much more in common in 

 bodily form than they have with horses or monkeys. 

 This conformity is still more obvious when we exam- 

 ine varieties of the same species ; the cat, tiger and lion 

 resemble each other in many respects where they dif- 

 fer from dogs and bears. If we turn from the class of 

 mammals to other classes, such as birds or fishes, we 

 find greater differences than we find in the other class. 



