Page:System of Logic.djvu/506

 should be some other property or set of properties, more readily recognizable by the observer, which co-exist with, and may be received as marks of, the properties which are the real groundwork of the classification. A natural arrangement, for example, of animals, must be founded in the main on their internal structure, but (as M. Comte remarks) it would be absurd that we should not be able to determine the genus and species of an animal without first killing it. On this ground, the preference, among zoological classifications, is probably due to that of M. De Blainville, founded on the differences in the external integuments; differences which correspond, much more accurately than might be supposed, to the really important varieties, both in the other parts of the structure, and in the habits and history of the animals.

This shows, more strongly than ever, how extensive a knowledge of the properties of objects is necessary for making a good classification of them. And as it is one of the uses of such a classification that by drawing attention to the properties on which it is founded, and which, if the classification be good, are marks of many others, it facilitates the discovery of those others; we see in what manner our knowledge of things, and our classification of them, tend mutually and indefinitely to the improvement of each other.

We said just now that the classification of objects should follow those of their properties which indicate not only the most numerous, but also the most important peculiarities. What is here meant by importance? It has reference to the particular end in view; and the same objects, therefore, may admit with propriety of several different classifications. Each science or art forms its classification of things according to the properties which fall within its special cognizance, or of which it must take account in order to accomplish its peculiar practical end. A farmer does not divide plants, like a botanist, into dicotyledonous and monocotyledonous, but into useful plants and weeds. A geologist divides fossils, not like a zoologist, into families corresponding to those of living species, but into fossils of the paleozoic, mesozoic, and tertiary periods, above the coal and below the coal, etc. Whales are or are not fish according to the purpose for which we are considering them. "If we are speaking of the internal structure and physiology of the animal, we must not call them fish; for in these respects they deviate widely from fishes; they have warm blood, and produce and suckle their young as land quadrupeds do. But this would not prevent our speaking of the whale-fishery, and calling such animals fish on all occasions connected with this employment; for the relations thus arising depend upon the animal's living in the water, and being caught in a manner similar to other fishes. A plea that human laws which mention fish do not apply to whales, would be rejected at once by an intelligent judge."(224)

These different classifications are all good, for the purposes of their own particular departments of knowledge or practice. But when we are studying objects not for any special practical end, but for the sake of extending our knowledge of the whole of their properties and relations, we must consider as the most important attributes those which contribute most, either by themselves or by their effects, to render the things like one another, and unlike other things; which give to the class composed of them the most marked individuality; which fill, as it were, the largest space in their existence, and would most impress the attention of a spectator who knew all