486 Mr. ]îiciiENO on Sî/stems and Metliods 



enabled the modems to arrive at conclusions with much more 

 expedition than they, and with equal safety. It does that at 

 once which is constantly going on in ordinary language, — the 

 modifications of it to express the classes of external objects. The 

 invention of new terms suited to express new ideas in an abridged 

 and compressed form, is a slow process, and in most cases is the 

 result of convenience. There is no convention to attain the 

 object, because nobody can arrest the subtile means that are 

 employed. But the naturalist being without terms, or at most 

 with so few that they are within his power, attempts to anticipate 

 the slow process usually working in language, and forms at once 

 his instruments of reasoning ; and systems and methods can be 

 regarded as no further useful, than as they are assimilated to the 

 ordinary process of abridging the labour of thought adopted by 

 mankind in other subjects of a like nature. 



Naturalists err greatly who imagine they are employing terms 

 possessing some new and distinct properties ; whereas all they 

 can do is to hold the subjects of natural history together in a loose 

 manner by the use of the words specks, genus, order, and class: 

 thus presenting certain characters to the mind as separate objects 

 of contemplation by means of abstract terms, of a similar though 

 somewhat more precise import than those which are employed by 

 the rest of mankind in treating general subjects. A stricter use 

 maj'^ be made of these words by naturalists than by metaphy- 

 sicians, because the business of the one is to examine characters 

 and qualities more nicely than the subjects entertained by the 

 other will admit of. Nevertheless, the one cannot employ these 

 abstractions as instruments of reasonintï in a ditierent sense from 

 the other. There is no magic about them in the hands of a 

 naturalist more than there is in any of the thousand general terms 

 in the mouths of the vulgar. •' Rose" and " Grass" were oeneric 

 names before the flood, and will continue to be so in spite of 



systems 



