My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

SELF-EDUCATION IN SCIENCE, ETC. 109orders were founded, and showed how often they gaveus a clue to the properties of large groups of species,and enabled us to detect real affinities under verydiverse external forms.I concluded by passing in review some of the bestmarked orders as illustrating these various features.Although crudely written and containing some errors,I still think it would serve as a useful lecture to anaudience generally ignorant of the whole subject, suchas the young mechanics of a manufacturing town.Its chief interest to me now is that it shows my earlybent towards classification, not the highly elaboratetype that seeks to divide and subdivide underdifferent headings with technical names, rendering thewhole scheme difficult to comprehend, and being inmost cases a hindrance rather than an aid to thelearner, but a simple and intelligible classificationwhich recognizes and defines all great natural groups,and does not needlessly multiply them on account ofminute technical differences. It has always seemedto me that the natural orders of flowering plantsafford one of the best, if not the very best, exampleof such a classification.It is this attraction to classification, not as ametaphysically complete system, but as an aid to thecomprehension of a subject, which is, I think, one ofthe chief causes of the success of my books, in almostall of which I have aimed at a simple and intelligiblerather than a strictly logical arrangement of thesubject-matter.Another lecture, the draft for which I preparedpretty fully, was on a rather wider subject— "TheAdvantages of Varied Knowledge " — in oppositionto the idea that it was better to learn one subject