ARTIFICIAL DEVICES 21 



of the kind is to be found in nature, notwithstanding the justification 

 which they appear to derive from certain apparently isolated portions 

 of the natural series with which we are acquainted. We may, there- 

 fore, rest assured that among her productions nature has not really 

 formed either classes, orders, families, genera or constant species, 

 but only individuals who succeed one another and resemble those 

 from which they sprung. Now these individuals belong to infinitely 

 diversified races, which blend together every variety of form and degree 

 of organisation ; and this is maintained by each without variation, 

 so long as no cause of change acts upon them. 



Let us proceed to a few brief observations with respect to each 

 of the six artificial devices employed in natural science. 



Schematic classifications. — By schematic classifications, general or 

 special, I mean any series of animals or plants that is drawn up un- 

 conformably to nature, that is to say, which does not represent 

 either her entire order or some portion of it. It is consequently 

 not based on a consideration of ascertained affinities. 



The belief is now thoroughly justified that an order established by 

 nature exists among her productions in each kingdom of living bodies : 

 this is the order on which each of these bodies was originally formed. 



This same order is individual and essentially without divisions 

 in each organic kingdom. It becomes known to us through the 

 affinities, special and general, existing among the different objects 

 of which these two kingdoms consist. The living bodies at the two 

 extremities of that order have essentially the fewest affinities, and 

 exhibit the greatest possible differences in their organisation and 

 structure. 



It is this same order, as we come to know it, that will have to replace 

 those schematic or artificial classifications that we have been forced 

 to create in order to arrange conveniently the different natural 

 bodies that we have observed. 



With regard to the various organised bodies recognised by observa- 

 tion, there was at first no other thought beyond convenience and ease 

 of distinction between these objects ; and it has taken the longer to 

 seek out the actual order of nature in their classification, inasmuch 

 as there was not even a suspicion of the existence of such an 

 order. 



Hence arose groupings of every kind, artificial systems and methods, 

 based upon considerations of such an arbitrary character that they 

 underwent almost as many changes in their principles and nature as 

 there were authors to work upon them. 



With regard to plants, the sexual system of Linnseus, ingenious 

 as it is, presents a general schematic classification : and, with regard 



