The end of Classification, as an instrument for the investigation of nature, is (as before stated) to make us think of those objects together, which have the greatest number of important common properties; and which therefore we have oftenest occasion, in the course of our inductions, for taking into joint consideration. Our ideas of objects are thus brought into the order most conducive to the successful prosecution of inductive inquiries generally. But when the purpose is to facilitate some particular inductive inquiry, more is required. To be instrumental to that purpose, the classification must bring those objects together, the simultaneous contemplation of which is likely to throw most light upon the particular subject. That subject being the laws of some phenomenon or some set of connected phenomena; the very phenomenon or set of phenomena in question must be chosen as the groundwork of the classification. The requisites of a classification intended to facilitate the study of a particular phenomenon, are, first, to bring into one class all Kinds of things which exhibit that phenomenon, in whatever variety of forms or degrees; and secondly, to arrange those Kinds in a series according to the degree in which they exhibit it, beginning with those which exhibit most of it, and terminating with those which exhibit least. The principal example, as yet, of such a classification, is afforded by comparative anatomy and physiology, from which, therefore, our illustrations shall be taken. § 2. The object being supposed to be, the investigation of the laws of animal life; the first step, after forming the most distinct conception of the phenomenon itself, possible in the existing state of our knowledge, is to erect into one great class (that of animals) all the known Kinds of beings where that phenomenon presents itself; in however various combinations with other properties, and in however different degrees. As some of these Kinds manifest the general phenomenon of animal life in a very high degree, and others in an insignificant degree, barely sufficient for recognition; we must, in the next place, arrange the various Kinds in a series, following one another according to the degrees in which they severally exhibit the phenomenon; beginning therefore with man, and ending with the most imperfect kinds of zoophytes.