XXiv PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDI110N. 
amusement, is surprised, when he makes the experiment, at the facilities 
it affords him in disentangling all kinds of affairs. 
It is not less useful in solitude. Sufficiently comprehensive to satisfy 
the most powerful mind, sufficiently various and interesting to calm the 
most agitated soul, it consoles the unhappy, and calms animosities. Once 
elevated to the contemplation of that harmony of nature irresistibly re- 
gulated by Providence, how weak and insignificant appear those causes 
which it has been pleased to leave dependent on the arbitrary will of man! 
How astonishing to behold so many examples of fine genius consuming 
themselves so vainly for their own happiness, or that of others, in the pur- 
suit of empty speculations, whose very traces a few years suffice to sweep 
away ! 
1 boldly avow it—these ideas have always been present to my mind in 
my laborious hours; and if I have endeavoured by every means in my 
power to diffuse this peaceful study, it is because, in my opinion, it is 
more capable than any other of supplying that want of occupation which 
has so largely contributed to the disorders of our age—but I must return 
to my subject. 
There yet remains the task of accounting for the principal changes I 
have effected in the latest received methods, and to acknowledge the 
amount of my obligations to those naturalists whose works have furnished 
or suggested a part of them. 
To anticipate a remark which will naturally present itself to many, I 
must observe that I have neither desired nor pretended to class animals 
so as to form one single line, or so as to mark their relative superiority. 
IT even consider every attempt of this kind impracticable. Thus, I do 
not mean that such of the Mammalia or of the Birds as come last are 
the most imperfect of their class; still less do I believe that the last of 
the Mammalia are more perfect than the first of the Birds, the last of 
the Mollusca more so than the first of the Annulata or of the Radiata, 
even confining the meaning of this vague expression, most perfect, to 
that of most completely organized. I regard my divisions and subdivi- 
sions as merely the graduated expression of the resemblance of the 
beings which enter into each of them; and although in some we observe 
a sort of degeneration or transition from one species to the other, which 
eannot be denied, this disposition is far from being general. ‘The pre- 
tended scale of beings is but an erroneous application to the whole crea- 
tion of those partial observations, which are only true when confined to 
the limits within which they were made—and this application has, in my 
opinion, prejudiced the progress of natural history in modern times, to an 
extent which it is not easy to imagine. 
It is in conformity with these views that I have established my general 
division into four sections, which have already been made known in a se- 
