A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive

by John Stuart Mill

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, [pg 504] are perhaps differences of kind; the lines of demarcation which divide those classes seem (though even on this I would not pronounce positively) to go through the whole nature of the plants. But the different species of a genus, or genera of a family, usually have in common only a limited number of characters. A Rose does not seem to differ from a Rubus, or the Umbelliferæ from the Ranunculaceæ, in much else than the characters botanically assigned to those genera or those families. Unenumerated differences certainly do exist in some cases; there are families of plants which have peculiarities of chemical composition, or yield products having peculiar effects on the animal economy. The Cruciferæ and Fungi contain an unusual proportion of nitrogen; the Labiatæ are the chief sources of essential oils, the Solaneæ are very commonly narcotic, etc. In these and similar cases there are possibly distinctions of Kind; but it is by no means indispensable that there should be. Genera and Families may be eminently natural, though marked out from one another by properties limited in number; provided those properties are important, and the objects contained in each genus or family resemble each other more than they resemble any thing which is excluded from the genus or family.

After the recognition and definition, then, of the infimæ species, the next step is to arrange those infimæ species into larger groups: making these groups correspond to Kinds wherever it is possible, but in most cases without any such guidance. And in doing this it is true that we are naturally and properly guided, in most cases at least, by resemblance to a type. We form our groups round certain selected Kinds, each of which serves as a sort of exemplar of its group. But though the groups are suggested by types, I can not think that a group when formed is determined by the type; that in deciding whether a species belongs to the group, a reference is made to the type, and not to the characters; that the characters “can not be expressed in words.” This assertion is inconsistent with Dr. Whewell’s own statement of the fundamental principle of classification, namely, that “general assertions shall be possible.” If the class did not possess any characters in common, what general assertions would be possible respecting it? Except that they all resemble each other more than they resemble any thing else, nothing whatever could be predicated of the class.

The truth is, on the contrary, that every genus or family is framed with distinct reference to certain characters, and is composed, first and principally, of species which agree in possessing all those characters. To these are added, as a sort of appendix, such other species, generally in small number, as possess nearly all the properties selected; wanting some of them one property, some another, and which, while they agree with the rest almost as much as these agree with one another, do not resemble in an equal degree any other group. Our conception of the class continues to be grounded on the characters; and the class might be defined, those things which either possess that set of characters, or resemble the things that do so, more than they resemble any thing else.

And this resemblance itself is not, like resemblance between simple sensations, an ultimate fact, unsusceptible of analysis. Even the inferior degree of resemblance is created by the possession of common characters. Whatever resembles the genus Rose more than it resembles any other genus, does so because it possesses a greater number of the characters of that genus than of the characters of any other genus. Nor can there be any real difficulty in representing, by an enumeration of characters, the nature and degree of the resemblance which is strictly sufficient to include any object [pg 505] in the class. There are always some properties common to all things which are included. Others there often are, to which some things, which are nevertheless included, are exceptions. But the objects which are exceptions to one character are not exceptions to another; the resemblance which fails in some particulars must be made up for in others. The class, therefore, is constituted by the possession of all the characters which are universal, and most of those which admit of exceptions. If a plant had the ovules erect, the stigmata divided, possessed the albumen, and was without stipules, it possibly would not be classed among the Rosaceæ. But it may want any one, or more than one of these characters, and not be excluded. The ends of a scientific classification are better answered by including it. Since it agrees so nearly, in its known properties, with the sum of the characters of the class, it is likely to resemble that class more than any other in those of its properties which are still undiscovered.

Not only, therefore, are natural groups, no less than any artificial classes, determined by characters; they are constituted in contemplation of, and by reason of, characters. But it is in contemplation not of those characters only which are rigorously common to all the objects included in the group, but of the entire body of characters, all of which are found in most of those objects, and most of them in all. And hence our conception of the class, the image in our minds which is representative of it, is that of a specimen complete in all the characters; most naturally a specimen which, by possessing them all in the greatest degree in which they are ever found, is the best fitted to exhibit clearly, and in a marked manner, what they are. It is by a mental reference to this standard, not instead of, but in illustration of, the definition of the class, that we usually and advantageously determine whether any individual or species belongs to the class or not. And this, as it seems to me, is the amount of truth contained in the doctrine of Types.

We shall see presently that where the classification is made for the express purpose of a special inductive inquiry, it is not optional, but necessary for fulfilling the conditions of a correct Inductive Method, that we should establish a type-species or genus, namely, the one which exhibits in the most eminent degree the particular phenomenon under investigation. But of this hereafter. It remains, for completing the theory of natural groups, that a few words should be said on the principles of the nomenclature adapted to them.

§ 5. A Nomenclature in science is, as we have said, a system of the names of Kinds. These names, like other class-names, are defined by the enumeration of the characters distinctive of the class. The only merit which a set of names can have beyond this, is to convey, by the mode of their construction, as much information as possible: so that a person who knows the thing, may receive all the assistance which the name can give in remembering what he knows; while he who knows it not, may receive as much knowledge respecting it as the case admits of, by merely being told its name.