Nature as it Is. 167 



one end; man should come at the other; and all 

 nature ought to lie between. How does the dia- 

 gram look, as drawn by these scientific authorities ? 



186. The groups are dispersed towards all points 

 of the compass, without any uniform angle of di- 

 vergence from one another, and without any uni- 

 form distance from the common centre, protoplasm. 

 Mammals are relegated into the distance like a far- 

 off nebula in the sky. Worse than that : Mr. 

 Spencer observes that no diagram on a plane sur- 

 face can give any correct idea of the actual diver- 

 gence, so irregularly scattered are the groups. 

 " Such relations cannot be represented in space of 

 two dimensions, but only in space of three dimen- 

 sions." For the differences are so profound that 

 " groups of the widest generality are based on char- 

 acteristics of the greatest importance, physiologi- 

 cally considered." So that as to anything like a lin- 

 ear succession of groups below falling just a little 

 short of groups respectively above them, by having 

 their development arrested; and so on up to man; 

 he says, referring to his diagram, " what remnant 

 there may seem to be of linear succession in some 

 of these sub-groups is simply an accident of typo- 

 graphical convenience. Each of them is to be re- 

 garded simply as a cluster." 



187. The same holds with regard to plants. I 

 shall simply quote some of his words. Speaking of 

 the classification of the vegetable kingdom, he says, 

 " here linear arrangement (that of a straight line by 



