Page:Observations on Man 1834.djvu/220

 The same may be said of the mineral kingdom, considered also according to its genera and species.

Animals are also analogous to vegetables in many things, and vegetables to minerals: so that there seems to be a perpetual thread of analogy continued from the most perfect animal to the most imperfect mineral, even till we come to elementary bodies themselves.

Suppose the several particulars of the three kingdoms to be represented by the letters of an alphabet sufficiently large for that purpose. Then we are to conceive, that any two contiguous species, as A and B, M and N, are more analogous than A and C, M and O, which have one between them. However, since A and B, M and N, are not perfectly analogous, this deficiency may be supplied in some things from C and O, in others from D and P, &c. so that M can have no part, property, &c. but what shall have something quite analogous to it in some species, near or remote, above it or below it, and even in several species. And in cases where the parts, properties, &c. are not rigorously exact in resemblance, there is, however, an imperfect one, which justifies the application of the same word to both: if it approach to perfection, the word may be said to be used in a literal sense; if it be very imperfect, in a figurative one. Thus when the names of parts, properties, &c. are taken from the animal kingdom, and applied to the vegetable, or vice versâ, they are more frequently considered as figurative, than when transferred from one part of the animal kingdom to another.

In like manner, there seems to be a gradation of analogies respecting the earth, moon, planets, comets, sun, and fixed stars, compared with one another. Or if we descend to the several parts of individuals, animals, vegetables, or minerals, the several organs of sensation are evidently analogous to each other; also the glands, the muscles, the parts of generation, in the different sexes of the same kind, &c. &c. without limits. For the more any one looks into the external natural world, the more analogies, general or particular, perfect or imperfect, will he find every where.

Numbers, geometrical figures, and algebraic quantities, are also mutually analogous without limits. And here there is the exactest uniformity, joined with an endless variety, so that it is always certain and evident how far the analogy holds, and where it becomes a disparity or opposition on one hand, or a coincidence on the other. There is no room for figures here; but the terms must be disparate, opposite, or the same, in a strictly literal sense respectively.

The several words of each particular language, the languages themselves, the idioms, figures, &c. abound also with numerous analogies of various kinds and degrees.

Analogies are likewise introduced into artificial things, houses, gardens, furniture, dress, arts, &c.