﻿98 CLEMENS' SYNOPSIS OF 



expression. It is through this medium that animated nature appeals to our internal 

 perceptions, and these evidences of thought are not adventitious and subject to change 

 or fluctuation, but ordained and immutable, and are the recondite expressions of the 

 Divine mind in which they had their origin. Thus emanating from the Source of all 

 Intelligence, natural bodies are not only perfect in structure and specially adapted 

 to fulfil the conditions for which they were created, but the concatenation of their 

 relationships to physical and animated nature, and amongst themselves, when once 

 all these are known, must present a series of logical and natural sequences, which 

 are at once the source and aim of all conceptions of method. The systematist is the 

 mere interpreter of what already exists, and his work is enduring in proportion as it 

 represents natural bodies as they are found in nature. What, then, is requisite to 

 form a conception of the concealed idea of each group, and in what consists these 

 ideas which appeal to our intelligence for recognition ? 



1st. A knowledge of all the mature forms belonging to any particular group ; their 

 peculiarities of structure, both external and internal ; the figures, physiological offices 

 and structure of all the external organs. 



2d. The embryonic forms and changes of individuals, or the details of their struc- 

 tural evolution from the ova to maturity. 



3d. The habits of both the active embryo and the perfect individual. 



It must be perfectly obvious, that the more absolute is the harmony or coincidence 

 between groups and individuals established by these details, the more intimate must 

 be the degree of natural relationship, until during the process of comparison which is 

 thus instituted, we reach a group in which the results of observation, the physiological 

 and ultimate peculiarities of structure, become absolutely identical, and we are 

 unable to ascertain the existence of further disagreements or any essential difference. 

 We have here, indeed, a reproduction of some special form and a repetition of the 

 same biography, and this constitutes the last and most intimate degree of natural 

 affinity. From this point, which we may regard as that of coincidence, the relation- 

 ships of the individual radiate in every conceivable direction, and display various 

 degrees of intimacy within the limits of genera, families, orders and classes. In 

 accordance with the thought expressed in the creation of each special form, the more or 

 less coincident or divergent results of observation, of the physiological structure and 

 office of the external and internal organs, of form and adaptation to particular modes 

 of life, result those conceptions of resemblance, of conformity or absolute identity in 

 individuals, which it is the aim of the methodist to represent in his generalizations. 

 Whatever may be the nature of these, whether natural or artificial; they are 

 simplified by the description of certain easily recognized diagnostic characters, usually 

 drawn from anatomical and structural peculiarities of the perfect being, and supposed 

 to represent variations or agreements of internal structure. 



