Page:System of Logic.djvu/509

 experiment upon the Kind itself; no inference respecting its properties from the properties of things not connected with it by Kind, goes for more than the sort of presumption usually characterized as an analogy, and generally in one of its fainter degrees.

Since the common properties of a true Kind, and consequently the general assertions which can be made respecting it, or which are certain to be made hereafter as our knowledge extends, are indefinite and inexhaustible; and since the very first principle of natural classification is that of forming the classes so that the objects composing each may have the greatest number of properties in common; this principle prescribes that every such classification shall recognize and adopt into itself all distinctions of Kind, which exist among the objects it professes to classify. To pass over any distinctions of Kind, and substitute definite distinctions, which, however considerable they may be, do not point to ulterior unknown differences, would be to replace classes with more by classes with fewer attributes in common; and would be subversive of the Natural Method of Classification.

Accordingly all natural arrangements, whether the reality of the distinction of Kinds was felt or not by their framers, have been led, by the mere pursuit of their own proper end, to conform themselves to the distinctions of Kind, so far as these have been ascertained at the time. The species of Plants are not only real Kinds, but are probably, all of them, real lowest Kinds, Infimæ Species; which, if we were to subdivide, as of course it is open to us to do, into sub-classes, the subdivision would necessarily be founded on definite distinctions, not pointing (apart from what may be known of their causes or effects) to any difference beyond themselves.

In so far as a natural classification is grounded on real Kinds, its groups are certainly not conventional: it is perfectly true that they do not depend upon an arbitrary choice of the naturalist. But it does not follow, nor, I conceive, is it true, that these classes are determined by a type, and not by characters. To determine them by a type would be as sure a way of missing the Kind, as if we were to select a set of characters arbitrarily. They are determined by characters, but these are not arbitrary. The problem is, to find a few definite characters which point to the multitude of indefinite ones. Kinds are Classes between which there is an impassable barrier; and what we have to seek is, marks whereby we may determine on which side of the barrier an object takes its place. The characters which will best do this should be chosen: if they are also important in themselves, so much the better. When we have selected the characters, we parcel out the objects according to those characters, and not, I conceive, according to resemblance to a type. We do not compose the species Ranunculus acris, of all plants which bear a satisfactory degree of resemblance to a model buttercup, but of those which possess certain characters selected as marks by which we might recognize the possibility of a common parentage; and the enumeration of those characters is the definition of the species.

The question next arises, whether, as all Kinds must have a place among the classes, so all the classes in a natural arrangement must be Kinds? And to this I answer, certainly not. The distinctions of Kinds are not numerous enough to make up the whole of a classification. Very few of the genera of plants, or even of the families, can be pronounced with certainty to be Kinds. The great distinctions of Vascular and Cellular, Dicotyledonous or Exogenous and Monocotyledonous or Endogenous plants,