230 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL CLASSIFICATION. 
wanting. The question then arises, upon what grounds 
do we contend that such are natural groups, seeing that 
their circularity cannot be traced? This leads us to 
consider the different relations which belong to every 
organised being, and to the developement of another law 
of nature, — both of which are now to be explained. 
(282.) We are thus conducted to our third pro- 
position. The contents of every circular group are 
symbolically or analogically represented by the contents 
of every other circle in the animal kingdom. ‘There are, 
in nature, two sorts of resemblances, which are termed 
analogy and affinity. We have so fully explained these 
relations in our preliminary volume *, that it is only in 
consequence of our wish to exhibit in a connected series 
all the laws of natural arrangement yet discovered, that 
we now repeat, in some measure, the substance of what 
has already been stated. 
(283.) The most ordinary observer perceives, that 
every created being has different degrees of relationship 
or of resemblance to others. Where this is immediate, 
it is termed an affinity ; where, on the other hand, it is 
remote, it is a relation of analogy.t 
(284.) The theoretic distinction between affinity and 
analogy, in a more scientific point of view, has been 
thus stated by the naturalist who first gave a definite 
meaning to the terms:—“ Suppose the existence of two 
parallel series of animals, the corresponding points of 
which agree in some one or two remarkable particulars 
of structure. Suppose, also, that the general conform- 
ation of the animals in each series passes so gradually 
from one species to the other, as to render any inter- 
ruption of their transition almost imperceptible. We 
shall thus have two very different relations, which must 
* Preliminary Discourse on Nat. Hist. 
t+ There cannot be a better proof of the low ebb to which the higher de- 
partments of zoology have sunk, and the ignorance of those persons wha 
are engaged to write reviews of scientific works for the daily press, than 
the fact of one of those critics, who undertook to censure our former vo- 
lume, being totally unacquainted with the difference between analogy and 
affinity! To him, it seems, they are only synonymous with ‘“ resem. 
blances,” and such “ resemblances,” forsooth, are to be ridiculed! 
