Species

Species and the Birth of Modern Science 93

If there are no cleavages in nature, it is evident that our classications [Distributions] are

not hers. Those which we form are purely nominal, and we should regard them as means

relative to our needs and to the limitations of our knowledge. Intelligences higher than

ours perhaps recognize between two individuals which we place in the same species more

varieties than we discover between two individuals of widely separated genera. Thus these

intelligences see in the scale of our world as many steps as there are individuals.^209

(^208) Bonnet 1745, 42.
(^209) Bonnet 1769, I, 28. Quoted in Lovejoy 1936, 231.
L’ HOMME.
Orang-Outang.
Singe.
QUADRUPEDES.
Ecureuil volant.
Chauvefouris.
Aurruche.
OISEAUX.
Oifeaux aquatiques.
Oifeaux amphibies.
Poiffons volans.
POISSONS.
Poillons rampans.
Anguilles.
Serpens d’e au.
SERPENS.
Limaces.
Limaçons.
COQUILLAGES.
Vers à tuyau.
Teignes.
INSECTES.
Gallinfectes.
Tenia, ou Solitaire.
Polypes.
Orties de Mer.
Senfitive.
PLANTES.
Lychens.
Moififfures.
Champignons, Agarics.
Truffer.
Coraux and Coralloïdes.
Lithophytes.
Amianthe.
Talcs, Gyps, Sélénites.
Ardoifes.
PIERRES.
Pierres figurées.
Cryftallifations.
SELS.
Vitriols.
METAUX.
DEMI-METAUX.
SOUFRES.
Bitumes.
TERRES.
Terre pure.
EAU.
AIR.
FEU.
Matieres plus fubtiles.
DESETRESNATURELS.
IDE’EED’UNE CHELLE
FIGURE 3.5 Bonnet’s scale of nature. Bonnet’s chain of being from his Traité d’Insectologie^208
was enormously inuential, even though it was a reworking of the medieval notions derived
originally from Aristotle. It was a static, rather than temporal, ladder, but Lamarck trans-
formed it into a temporal sequence.