For instance, some
groups have lungs, others have no lung, but an organ analogous to a
lung in its place; some have blood, others have no blood, but a
fluid analogous to blood, and with the same office. To treat of the
common attributes in connexion with each individual group would
involve, as already suggested, useless iteration. For many groups have
common attributes. So much for this topic.
As every instrument and every bodily member subserves some partial
end, that is to say, some special action, so the whole body must be
destined to minister to some Plenary sphere of action. Thus the saw is
made for sawing, for sawing is a function, and not sawing for the saw.
Similarly, the body too must somehow or other be made for the soul,
and each part of it for some subordinate function, to which it is
adapted.
We have, then, first to describe the common functions, common,
that is, to the whole animal kingdom, or to certain large groups, or
to the members of a species. In other words, we have to describe the
attributes common to all animals, or to assemblages, like the class of
Birds, of closely allied groups differentiated by gradation, or to
groups like Man not differentiated into subordinate groups. In the
first case the common attributes may be called analogous, in the
second generic, in the third specific.
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