Note 24 — Chapter VIII · OF CLASSIFICATION BY SERIES.

Dr. Whewell, in his reply (Philosophy of Discovery, p. 270) says that he "stopped short of, or rather passed by, the doctrine of a series of organized beings," because he "thought it bad and narrow philosophy." If he did, it was evidently without understanding this form of the doctrine; for he proceeds to quote a passage from his "History," in which the doctrine he condemns is designated as that of "a mere linear progression in nature, which would place each genus in contact only with the preceding and succeeding ones." Now the series treated of in the text agrees with this linear progression in nothing whatever but in being a progression.

It would surely be possible to arrange all places (for example) in the order of their distance from the North Pole, though there would be not merely a plurality, but a whole circle of places at every single gradation in the scale.