'214: THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



propositions — that is, by one sentence to give the char 

 actors common, for instance, to ull mammals, by another 

 those common to all carnivora, by another those common 

 to the (log-genus, and then, by adding a single sentence, 

 a full description is given of each kind of dog. The in- 

 genuity and utility of this system are indisputable. But 

 many naturalists think that something more is meant by 

 the Natural System; they believe that it reveals the plan 

 of the Creator; but unless it be specified whether order 

 in time or space, or both, or what else is meant by the 

 plan of the Creator, it seems to me that nothing is thus 

 added to our knowledge. Expressions such as that fa- 

 mous one by Linnaeus, which we often meet with in a 

 more or less concealed form, namely, that the characters 

 do not make the genus, but that the genus gives the 

 characters, seem to imply that some deeper bond is in- 

 cluded in our classifications than mere resemblance. I 

 believe that this is the case, and that community of de 

 scent — the one known cause of close similarity in organic 

 beings — is the bond, which, though obsdrved by various 

 degrees of modification, is partially revealed to us by our 

 classifications. 



Let us now consider the rules followed in classifica- 

 tion, and the difficulties which are encountered on the 

 view that classification either gives some unknown plan 

 of creation, or is simply a scheme for enunciating general 

 propositions and of placing together the forms most like 

 each other. It might have been thought (and was in 

 ancient times thought) that those parts of the structure 

 which determined the habits of life, and the general 

 place of each being in the economy of nature, would be 

 of very high importance in classification. Nothing can 



