486 
CONCLUSION. 
Chap. XIV. 
made for convenience. Tins may not be a cheering 
prospect; but we shall at least be freed from the vain 
search for the undiscovered and undiscoverable essence 
of the term species. 
The other and more general departments of natural 
history will rise greatly in interest. The terms used by 
naturalists of affinity, relationship, community of type, 
paternity, morphology, adaptive characters, ruclimentary 
and aborted organs, &c., will cease to be metaphorical, 
and will have a plain signiflcation. When we no longer 
look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at 
something wholly beyond his comprehension; Avhen we 
regard every production of nature as one which has had 
a history ; when we contemplate every complex structure 
and instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, 
each useful to the possessor, nearly in the same way as 
when we look at any great mechanical invention as the 
summing up of the labour, the experience, the reason, 
and even the blunders of numerous workmen; when we 
thus view each organic being, how far more interesting, 
I speak from experience, will the study of natural 
history become! 
A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will 
be opened, on the causes and laws of variation, on corre¬ 
lation of growth, on the effects of use and disuse, on 
the direct action of external conditions, and so forth. 
The study of domestic productions will rise immensely 
in value. A new variety raised by man will be a more 
important and interesting subject for study than one 
more species added to the infinitude of already re¬ 
corded species. Our classifications will come to be, as 
far as they can be so made, genealogies; and will then 
truly give what may be called the plan of creation. 
The rules for classifying will no doubt become simpler 
when we have a definite object in vieAV. We possess no 
