406 THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE. 



arrangement of the various kinds of animals and plants. 

 Systematic Botany and Zoology have been commonly 

 known as the Classificatory Sciences, and scientific men 

 seemed to suppose that the methods of arrangement, 

 which we e suitable for living creatures, must be the best 

 for all other classes of objects. Several mineralogists, 

 especially Mohs, have attempted to arrange minerals in 

 genera and species, just as if they had been animals capable 

 of reproducing their kind with variations, and thus having 

 relatives like distant cousins. 



It is highly remarkable that this confusion of ideas 

 between the relationship of living forms and the logical 

 relationship of things in general prevailed from the earliest 

 times, as manifested in the etymology of words. We 

 familiarly speak of a kind of things meaning a class of 

 things, and the kind consists of those things which are 

 akin, or come of the same race. It is even believed by 

 some etymologists that second means other kind, the Latin 

 suffix cund being thus regarded as cognate with kind*. 

 Similarly when Socrates and his followers wanted a name 

 for a class regarded in a philosophical light, they again 

 adopted the analogy in question, and called it a 7*1/0?, or 

 race, the root yev- being distinctly connected with the 

 notion of generation. 



So long as the species of plants and animals were 

 believed to proceed from distinct and unconnected acts of 

 Creation, the multitudinous points of resemblance and 

 difference which they present, possessed a simply logical 

 character, and might be treated as a guide to the classifi- 

 cation of other objects generaUy. But when once we 

 come to regard these resemblances as purely hereditary 

 in their origin, w^e see that the sciences of systematic 

 Botany and Zoology have a special character of their 

 own. There is no reason whatever to suppose that the 

 f Vernon, 'Anglo-Saxon Guide,' p, 68. 



