Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

I think Hume is right in holding that they should be ranked under distinct heads, with a peculiar name for each.

But nevertheless for their worth's sake they should be ranked and treated separately, for they are of excellent use in indicating the composition and structure of things, and suggesting the causes of the number and quality of the ordinary species in the universe, and carrying on the understanding from that which is to that which may be. Examples of these are: moss, which holds a place between putrescence and a plant; some comets, between stars and fiery meteors; flying fish, between birds and fish; bats, between birds and quadrupeds; also the ape, between man and beast — Simia quam similis turpissima bestia nobis; likewise the biformed births of animals, mixed of different species, and the like. XXXI Among Prerogative Instances I will put in the tenth place Instances of Power, or of the Fasces (to borrow a term from the badges of empire); which I also call Instances of the Wit, or Hands of Man.

But it is far more necessary (because much depends upon it) that men should know that violent motion (which we call mechanical, but which Democritus, who in expounding his primary motions is to be ranked even below second-rate philosophers, called motion of stripe) is nothing more than this motion of liberty, that is, of escape from compression to relaxation.

I think this must be admitted, when we find that there are hardly any domestic races, either amongst animals or plants, which have not been ranked by some competent judges as mere varieties, and by other competent judges as the descendants of aboriginally distinct species.

Altogether at least a score of pigeons might be chosen, which if shown to an ornithologist, and he were told that they were wild birds, would certainly, I think, be ranked by him as well-defined species.

In plants the same gradual process of improvement, through the occasional preservation of the best individuals, whether or not sufficiently distinct to be ranked at their first appearance as distinct varieties, and whether or not two or more species or races have become blended together by crossing, may plainly be recognised in the increased size and beauty which we now see in the varieties of the heartsease, rose, pelargonium, dahlia, and other plants, when compared with the older varieties or with their parent-stocks.

In very many cases, however, one form is ranked as a variety of another, not because the intermediate links have actually been found, but because analogy leads the observer to suppose either that they do now somewhere exist, or may formerly have existed; and here a wide door for the entry of doubt and conjecture is opened.

Hence, in determining whether a form should be ranked as a species or a variety, the opinion of naturalists having sound judgment and wide experience seems the only guide to follow.

We must, however, in many cases, decide by a majority of naturalists, for few well-marked and well-known varieties can be named which have not been ranked as species by at least some competent judges.

Compare the several floras of Great Britain, of France or of the United States, drawn up by different botanists, and see what a surprising number of forms have been ranked by one botanist as good species, and by another as mere varieties.