ON THE NATURAL SYSTEM. liU 



quently possess as yet no claim to corroborative evidence. Seeing, 

 nevertheless, that the longest life is insufficient to analyse more than 

 an insignificant portion of Nature's works, and that centuries, probably, 

 may elapse before the true arrangement of all known animals, by 

 such a mode of investigation, can be detected, the mind may be allowed 

 to take a wider range ; and, presuming that a system regulating such 

 an important and comprehensive class of the animal kingdom would 

 necessarily pervade all nature, let us briefly consider the subject under 

 this light, divested of metaphysical definitions. 



1 . The true nature of Matter has never yet, and probably never will 

 be, clearly understood. Philosophers, however, distinguish two divi- 

 sions, to which they give the names of ponderable and imponderable ; 

 while electricity, which, from its peculiar phenomena, cannot be com- 

 prised under either, is still conceived by some to form a third. 



2. As ponderosity is that quality of matter by which it is most dis- 

 tinguished from Time and Space*, from Light and Heat, so we may 

 esteem it the typical peculiarity of Matter. 



3. Ponderable matter, in common language, is termed a body, and 

 of such bodies we know only of three sorts — i. Animals ; ii. Vegetables ; 

 and iii. Minerals — the two first being organic, the latter inorganic. 



The general sense of mankind, from the earliest ages to the present 

 time, has concurred in considering all the substances composing our 

 globe as belonging to one or other of these three divisions or king- 

 doms. This conclusion, indeed, is so natural, and appears to me so 

 just, that it seems almost needless to uphold its propriety. It has 

 been insisted, however *, that the primary division of matter is into 

 organic and inorganic \. Now, to use this distinction :{: in common 



* See Hora Ent., 179. t Horae Ent., p. 175. 



X ' Who does not see that I was here hinting- at the quinary division of matter as much as if I 

 had expressed it tabularly thus? 



MATTER. 



. Normal Group, fl. Animals. 



Organic. (2. Vegetables. 



!3 * * * 

 A * * * 

 5 '_ * * *> 



— Macleay's Letter to Dr. Fleming*, p. 10. 

 Mr. Macleay, however, upon a former occasion, observes, with more justice, • We have two natural, 

 but I fear somewhat arbitrary, divisions of matter into organic and inorganic. No person denies the 



