372 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



genera, but that it could be wholly dispensed with, the 

 internal conditions acting by themselves being amply 

 sufficient to form them." And it is from the case of these 

 finger-marks that he considers the reality of positions of 

 organic stability has been proved, and that they are 

 " competent to mould races without any help whatever from 

 the process of selection." 



At first sight this may appear to be sound reasoning, 

 and to be fatal to some of the claims of the Darwinians, 

 but further examination will show that it is a pure 

 fallacy arising from the vague use of terms, and from 

 comparing quite different things as if they were of the 

 same nature. The fallacy depends on applying the terms 

 of classification in systematic biology to groups of single 

 objects which have no real relation with the genera and 

 species of the naturalist. The essential character of a 

 species in biology is, that it is a group of living organisms, 

 separated from all other such groups by a set of distinctive 

 characters, having relations to the environment not iden- 

 tical with those of any other group of organisms, and 

 having the power of continuously reproducing its like. 

 Genera are merely assemblages of a number of these 

 species which have a closer resemblance to each other in 

 certain important and often prominent characters than 

 they have to any other groups of species. It will be 

 more intelligible and more instructive if we confine our- 

 selves to species as the unit of comparison with Mr. 

 Galton's groups of stable finger-patterns, in order to show 

 the fundamental differences between them. And first we 

 see that Mr. Galton classifies the marks themselves, not 

 the individuals who possess the marks. He tells us that 

 the very same general varieties in these marks are found 

 in English, Hindoos, and Negroes, and, presumably in all 

 other races ; and, further, that he has " failed to observe 

 any correlation between the patterns and any single 

 personal quality, whether mental or physical." All this is 

 entirely different from either specific or generic characters, 

 whose essential feature is that they are found in every 

 normal individual of the genus or species, and are ahvays 

 correlated with other characters. In his first paper on 



