PASSIONAL CLASSIFICATION. 
323 
Cuvier vs^rote that classification is itself the ideal to which natural 
histoiy should tend, he wrote a very true thing, because he im- 
plicitly understands that classification requires the intimate knowl- 
edge of the character of the individuals to be classed. Unfortu- 
nately the immortal discoverer of the mastodon stops at his premi- 
ses instead of passing to his conclusion ; and he does not divine 
that it is passion which distributes characters to beasts as well as 
to men, and which writes the true name of flowers upon their 
corollas. 
This was however less difficult than to construct an entire paleo- 
therium or dinotherium (beasts that had never been seen) from 
a simple tooth or a simple vertebra. 
When we read Geoffroi St. Hilaire, the learned Egyptian, much 
more a poet and more an analogist than Cuvier — a naturalist who 
enlightens himself in the beams of the principle of Unity, we ex- 
pect every moment to see the irradiating proposition arise from 
the connection of his statements, we listen for a new Eureka of 
Archimedes. Vain hope ! the analogist gropes into the same 
blind path as his illustrious rival. He throws the helve after the 
axe, and exclaims in his discouragement, that classification is im- 
possible. 
Geoftroi St. Hilaire came to this sad confession of impotence 
only because he acted as a simplistj studying the vertebral rela- 
tions of beings too much, and their passional relations too little. 
The fault of Geoffroi St. Hilaire, and of Cuvier and others is, in 
a word, to have had too much respect for the prejudices of man, 
and not enough for the revelations of God. A little more religion 
and confidence in the principle of Unity would have opened their 
eyes to see that passion is the chain which links all beings togeth- 
er — the brute to man, man to nature and to God. And as they 
would have seen that every creature inferior to man is a mirror of 
his passions, virtues or vices, they would have been led by analogy 
to baptise every creature in the name of the human passion which 
it symbolized. 
Instead of acting thus, and determining the character of the an- 
imal by its dominant passion, they have tried to determine it by 
the form, e., they have put the cart before the horse, which was 
