CLASSIFICATION BY SERIES, 447 



pei-fection. M. Comte, with much apparent reason, gives, on these 

 grounds, gi-catly the preference to the classification framed by M. de 

 Blainville ; as representing correctly, by the mere order of the groups, 

 the successive degeneracy of animal nature from its highest to its most 

 imperfect exemplification. 



§ 5. A classification of any large portion of the, field of nature, in con- 

 formity to the foregoing principles, has hitherto been found practicable 

 only in one great instance, that of animals. In the case even of vege- 

 tables, the natural arrangement has not been carried beyond the forma- 

 tion of natural groups. Naturalists have found and probably will 

 continue to find it impossible to form those gi-oups into any series, the 

 terms of which correspond to real gi'adations in the phenomenon of 

 vegetative or organic life. Such a difference of degree may be traced 

 between the class of Vascular Plants and that of Cellular, which 

 includes lichens, algre, and other substances whose organization is 

 simpler and more rudimentary than that of the higher order of vegeta- 

 bles, and. which therefore approach nearer to mere inorganic nature. 

 But when we rise much above this point, we do not find any recogniz- 

 able difference in the degree in which different plants possess the 

 properties of organization and life. The dicotylcdones and the mono- 

 cotyledones are distinct natural groups, but it cannot be said, even by 

 a metaphor, that the former are more or less plants than the latter. 

 The palm-tree and the oak, the rose and the tulip, are organized and 

 vegetate in a different manner, but certainly not in a different degree. 

 The natural classification of vegetables must therefore continue to be 

 made without reference to any scale or series; and the whole vegetable 

 kingdom must form, as it does in M. Comte's arrangement, one single 

 step or gradation, the lowest of all in the series of. organized beings, 

 scientifically constructed for the purpose of facilitating the investiga- 

 tion of the laws of organic life. 



Although the scientific arrangements of organic nature affiird as yet 

 the only complete example of the true principles of rational' classifica- 

 tion, whether as to the formation of gi'oups or of series, those principles 

 are applicable to all cases in which mankind are called upon to bring 

 the various parts of any extensive subject into mental coordination. 

 They are as much to the point when objects are to be classed for 

 pui-poses of ait or business, as for those of science. The proper 

 an-angement, for example, of a code of laws, depends upon the same 

 scientific conditions as the classifications in natural history; nor could 

 there be a better preparatory discipline for that important function, 

 than the study of the pi-inciples of a natural arrangement, not only in 

 the abstract, but in their actual application to the class of phenomena 

 for which they were first elaborated, and which are still the best school 

 for learning their use. Of this the gi-eat authority on codification, 

 Bentham, was perfectly aware : and his early Fragment on Government, 

 the admirable introduction to a scries of writings unequalcd in their 

 peculiar department, contains clear and just views (as far as they go) 

 on the meaning of a natural arrangement, such as could scarcely have 

 occuiTcd to any one who lived anterior to iho ago of Linnaeus and 

 Bernard de Jussieu. 



