Natural law in the spiritual world / by Henry Drummond.

  • Henry Drummond
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Natural law in the spiritual world / by Henry Drummond. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    is twofold. It is a principle in science that classifi- cation should rest on the most basal characteristics. To determine what these are may not always be easy, but it is at least evident that a classification framed on the ultimate nature of organisms must be more distinctive than one based on external characters. Before the principles of classification were understood, organisms were invariably arranged according to some merely external resemblance. Thus plants were classed according to size as Herbs, Shrubs, and Trees; and animals according to their appearance as Birds, Beasts, and Fishes. The Bat upon this principle was a bird, the Whale a fish ; and so thoroughly artificial were these early systems that animals were often tabulated among the plants, and plants among the animals. “ In early attempts,” says Herbert Spencer, “to arrange organic beings in some systematic manner, we see at first a guidance by conspicuous and simple characters, and a tendency towards arrangement in linear order. In successively later attempts, we see more regard paid to combinations of characters which are essential but often inconspicuous; and a gradual abandon- ment of a linear arrangement for an arrangement in divergent groups and re-divergent sub-groups.”1
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