Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

Many of the species of the larger genera resemble varieties in being very closely, but unequally, related to each other, and in having restricted ranges.

Species of the larger genera in any country vary more than the species of the smaller genera.

Such instances, however, are of very great service for the discovery of forms; because as striking instances lead easily to specific differences, so are clandestine instances the best guides to genera, that is, to those common natures whereof the natures proposed are nothing more than particular cases.

They are therefore of most excellent use in raising and elevating the understanding from specific differences to genera, and in dispelling phantoms and false images of things, which in concrete substances come before us in disguise. For example, let the nature in question be heat.

As regards the informative, they assist either the senses or the understanding: the senses, as the five instances of the lamp; the understanding, either by hastening the exclusion of the form, as solitary instances; or by narrowing and indicating more nearly the affirmative of the form, as instances migratory, striking, of companionship, and subjunctive; or by exalting the understanding and leading it to genera and common natures, either immediately, as instances clandestine, singular, and of alliance, or in the next degree, as constitutive, or in the lowest, as conformable; or by setting the understanding right when led astray by habit, as deviating instances; or by leading it to the great form or fabric of the universe, as bordering instances; or by guarding it against false forms and causes, as instances of the fingerpost and of divorce.

I am fully convinced that species are not immutable; but that those belonging to what are called the same genera are lineal descendants of some other and generally extinct species, in the same manner as the acknowledged varieties of any one species are the descendants of that species.

Moreover, on the view of the origin of genera which I shall presently give, we have no right to expect often to meet with generic differences in our domesticated productions.

Species of the larger genera in any country vary more than the species of the smaller genera.

Many of the species of the larger genera resemble varieties in being very closely, but unequally, related to each other, and in having restricted ranges.

There is one point connected with individual differences, which seems to me extremely perplexing: I refer to those genera which have sometimes been called "protean" or "polymorphic," in which the species present an inordinate amount of variation; and hardly two naturalists can agree which forms to rank as species and which as varieties.