led to weigh more carefully and to value higher the actual amount of
difference between them. It is quite possible that forms now generally
acknowledged to be merely varieties may hereafter be thought worthy of
specific names, as with the primrose and cowslip; and in this case
scientific and common language will come into accordance. In short, we
shall have to treat species in the same manner as those naturalists
treat genera, who admit that genera are merely artificial combinations
made for convenience. This 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, rudimentary and aborted organs, etc., will cease to be
metaphorical, and will have a plain signification. When we no longer
look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something
wholly beyond his comprehension; when 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 correlation 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 far more important and
interesting subject for study than one more species added to the
infinitude of already recorded 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 view. We
possess no pedigrees or armorial bearings; and we have to discover and
trace the many diverging lines of descent in our natural genealogies,
by characters of any kind which have long been inherited. Rudimentary
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