i 
ae ia ' 
¥ INTRODUCTION. e 5 
which are but momentary cannot, itien, furnish characters— 
they must be drawn from the conformation. : 
There is scarcely a single being which has a simple charac- 
ter, or can be recognised by one single feature of its conforma- 
tion; a union of several of these traits are almost always re- 
quired to distinguish one being from those that surround it, 
who also have some but not all of them, or who have them 
combined with others of which the first is destitute. The 
more numerous the beings to. be distinguished, the greater 
should be the number of traits; so that to distinguish an indi- 
Me ae being from all others, a complete description of it should 
enter into its character. 
‘Tt is to avoid this i inconvenience, that divisions and subdi- 
‘visions have been invented. A certain number only of neigh- 
bouring beings are compared with each other, and their cha- 
racters need only to express their differences, which, by the 
supposition itself, are. the least part of their conformation. 
Me a re-union is termed a genus. 
™ The same inconvenience would be expericnoed in distin- 
: 
guishing genera from each other, were it not for the repetition 
of the operation in uniting the adjoining genera, so as to form 
an’ order, the orders to form a class, &c. Intermediate sub- 
- divisions may also be established. 
This scaffolding of divisions, the superior of which’ contain 
| ‘the inferior, is called a method. It isin some respects a sort of 
dictionary, in which we proceed from the properties of things 
_ to arrive at their names; being the reverse of the common 
ones, in which we proceed from the name to arrive at the 
property. , 
When the method is good, it does more than teach us names. 
If the subdivisions ‘have not been established arbitrarily, but 
are based on the true fundamental relations, on the essential 
resemblances of beings, the method is the surest means of re- 
ducing the properties of beings.to general rules, of expressing 
them in the fewest words, and of stamping them on the me- 
mory. 
To render it such, we employ an assiduous comparison of 
beings, directed by the principle of the sebordination of cha- 
