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comparison,—of the reproductive and nutritive arrangements,—this
proposition has taken its rank among the most eminent theorems of natural
philosophy. But this beginning of a hierarchy remains obviously insuf-
ficient,—the numerous families in each of the three divisions remaining
under a purely arbitrary arrangement, which we can hardly hope to
convert into a rational one. The interior distribution of species, and even
of genera, within each family must be radically imperfect, as the requi-
site taxonomical principles cannot be applied to their arrangement till
the difficulty of the co-ordination of the families,—a difficulty much
less, but as yet insurmountable,—has been overcome. The Natural
Method has, therefore, as yet yielded no other result, as to the vegetable
kingdom, than the more or less empirical establishment of families and
genera. We cannot be surprised that it has not yet excluded the use of
artificial methods, and above all that of Linnaeus,—true as it is that, up
to our time, the co-ordination of the vegetable kingdom was the field for
the application of the Natural Method. It should ever be remembered,
however, that the Natural Method is not merely a means of classifica-
tion, but an important system of real knowledge as to the true relations
of existing beings: so that even if it should be disused for the purposes
of descriptive botany, it would not the less be of high value for the study
of plants, the comparative results of which would be fixed and com-
bined by it. In the present condition and prospects of the science, as to
the establishment of a vegetable series, we must take the whole veg-
etable kingdom together as the last term of the great biological series,—
as the last of the small number of essential modes of organization which
(when the subdivisions are disregarded) are markedly separated from
Positive Philosophy/67
each other in the classification that gives us the logical command of the
study of living beings. Applied first to the vegetable kingdom, the natu-
ral method is now seen to be the means by which the animal realm, the
type of all our knowledge of organic life, is to be perfected. To whatever
orders of phenomena natural classification is to be applied, here its theory
must first be studied; and hence it is that biological science bears so
important a part in the advancement of the whole of the positive method.
It is much that a considerable progress has been made in ranging, in a
due order of dignity, the immense series of living beings, from Man to
the simplest plant: but, moreover, this theory of classification is an in-
dispensable element of the whole positive method; an element which
could not have been developed in any other way, nor even otherwise
appreciated.
Chapter IV
Organic or Votive Life
We have to pass on to dynamical biology, which is very far indeed from
having attained the clearness and certainty of the statical department of
the science. Important as are the physiological researches of recent times,
they are only preliminary attempts, which must be soundly systematized
before they can constitute a true dynamical biology. The minds which
are devoted to mathematical, astronomical, and physical studies are not
of a different make from those of physiologists; and the sobriety of the
former classes, and the extravagance of the latter, must be ascribed to
the definite constitution of the simpler sciences and the chaotic state of
physiology. The melancholy condition of this last is doubtless owing in
part to the vicious education of those who cultivate it, and who go straight
to the study of the most complex phenomena without having prepared
their understandings by the practice of the most simple and positive
speculation: but I consider the prevalent license as due yet more to the
indeterminate condition of the spirit of physiological science. In fact,
the two disadvantages are one; for if the true character of the science
were established, the preparatory education would immediately be rec-
tified.
This infantine state of physiology prescribes the method of treating
it here. I cannot proceed, as in statical biology, to an analytical estimate
of established conceptions. I can only examine, in pure physiology, the
notions of method; that is, the mode of organization of the researches
necessary to the ascertainment of the laws of vital phenomena. The
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progress of biological philosophy depends on the distinct and rational
institution of physiological questions, and not on attempts, which must
be premature, to resolve them. Conceptions relating to method are al-
ways important in proportion to the complexity of the phenomena in
view: therefore are they especially valuable in the case of vital phenom-
ena; and above all, while the science is in a nascent state.
Though all vital phenomena are truly interconnected, we must, as
usual, decompose them, for purposes of speculative study, into those of
greater and those of less generality. This distinction answers to Bichat’s
division into the organic or vegetative life, which is the common basis of
existence of all living bodies; and animal life, proper to animals but the
chief characters of which are clearly marked only in the higher part of
the zoological scale. But, since Gall’s time, It has become necessary to
add a third division,—the positive study of the intellectual and moral
phenomena which are distinguished from the preceding by a yet more
marked speciality, as the organisms which rank nearest to Man are the
only ones which admit of their direct exploration. Though, under a rig-
orous definition, this last class of functions may doubtless be implicitly
included in what we call the animal life, yet its restricted generality, the
dawning positivity of its systematic study, and the peculiar nature of the
higher difficulties that it offers, all indicate that we ought, at least for
the present, to regard this new scientific theory as a last fundamental
branch of physiology; in order that an unseasonable fusion should not
disguise its high importance, and alter its true character. These, then,
are the three divisions which remain for us to study, in our survey of
biological science. Before proceeding to the analysis of organic or veg-
etative life, I must say a few words on the theory of organic media,
without considering which, there can be no true analysis of vital phe-
nomena.
This new element may be said to have been practically introduced
into the science by that controversy of Lamarck already treated of, about
the variation of animal species through the prolonged influence of exter-
nal circumstances. It is our business here to exclude from the researches
thus introduced, everything but what concerns physiology property so
called, reduced to the abstract theory of the living organism. We have
seen that the vital state supposes the necessary and permanent concur-
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