For when the process of classification has been carried as far as it is possible for the uncivilized to carry it—when the animal kingdom has been grouped not merely into quadrupeds, birds, fishes, and insects, but each of these divided into kinds—when there come to be classes, in each of which the members differ only as individuals, and not specifically; it is clear that there must frequently occur an observation of objects which differ so little as to be indistinguishable. Among several creatures which the savage has killed and carried home, it must often happen that some one, which he wished to identify, is so exactly like another that he cannot tell which is which. Thus, then, there originates the notion of _equality_. The things which among ourselves are called _equal_—whether lines, angles, weights, temperatures, sounds or colours—are things which produce in us sensations which cannot be distinguished from each other. It is true that we now apply the word _equal_ chiefly to the separate traits or relations which objects exhibit, and not to those combinations of them constituting our conceptions of the objects; but this limitation of the idea has evidently arisen by analysis. That the notion of equality originated as alleged, will, we think, become obvious on remembering that as there were no artificial objects from which it could have been {36} abstracted, it must have been abstracted from natural objects; and that the various families of the animal kingdom chiefly furnish those natural objects which display the requisite exactitude of likeness.