THE EVOLUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 47 



with our Linneons, it is of course improbable that we 

 should always have grasped nature's meaning and soit 

 may — if natural grouping really does exist — be ex- 

 pected that some of our Linneons will be mere con- 

 ceptions (and, in that case, wrong ones) of our mind, 

 while others may have existence in nature. 



How this could come to happen, an example may 

 show. 



Suppose the different races of mankind were pure- 

 bred, — as our schoolbooks, describing the ancient Nor- 

 mans as invariably fair-haired, blue eyed, beautiful- 

 ly proportioned gods and goddesses, rather than men 

 and women, try to make us believe, they formerly 

 were — then the races of mankind would be as many 

 pure species. 



Now suppose the world were thus peopled by speci- 

 fically pure Caucasians, Mongolians, Indians and Ne- 

 groes, and we were charged to constitute an army of 

 them, containing the men as well as the women, then 

 we could solve this problem in different ways. 



Suppose we arranged them into 4 bataillons, each 

 bataillon consisting of one species only, then we would 

 get a Caucasian bataillon, a MongoUan bataillon, an 

 Indian bataillon and a Negro one. Now suppose a 

 superior officer came along and said we had united too 

 many individuals into one bataillon, and charged us to 

 cut them up into bataillons of the perscribed size, to 

 unite such bataillons to proper regiments, and such 

 regiments to an army, we might get four armies of 

 exactly the same constitution as our bataillons were, 

 which could very properly be designated as the Cau- 



