[199] M. Jourdain, under the head "Espèce," in his Dictionnaire des Termes des Sciences Naturelles , after citing a long list of definitions from leading authors, concludes with the following remarks, which, as the question now stands before the world, places the term species just where it should be:— "It is evident that we can, among organized bodies, regard as a species only such a collection of beings as resemble each other more than they resemble others, and which, by a consent more or less unanimous, it is agreed to designate by a common name; for a species is but a simple abstraction of the mind , and not a group, exactly determined by nature herself, as ancient as she is, and of which she has irrevocably traced the limits.
— from The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races With Particular Reference to Their Respective Influence in the Civil and Political History of Mankind by Gobineau, Arthur, comte de