CHAP, ii.] Organs from Cesalpino to Linnaeus. 81 



'Fundamenta Botanica' (1736), his ' Classes Plantarum ' (1738), 

 and his ' Philosophia Botanica' (1751), must be thoroughly 

 convinced that the ideas on which his theories are based are 

 to be found scattered up and down in the works of his prede- 

 cessors ; further, whoever has traced the history of the sexual 

 theory from the time of Camerarius (1694), must allow that 

 Linnaeus added nothing new to it, though he contributed 

 essentially to its recognition, and that even after Koelreuter's 

 labours he continued to entertain some highly obscure and 

 even mystical notions on the subject. 



But that which gave Linnaeus so overwhelming an import- 

 ance for his own time was the skilful way in which he gathered 

 up all that had been done before him ; this fusing together of 

 the scattered acquisitions of the past is the great and charac- 

 teristic merit of Linnaeus. 



Cesalpino was the first who introduced Aristotelian modes 

 of thought into botany ; his system was intended to be a 

 natural one, but it was in reality extremely unnatural ; Lin- 

 naeus, in whose works the profound impression which he had 

 received from Cesalpino is everywhere to be traced, retained all 

 that was important in his predecessor's views, but perceived at 

 the same time what no one before him had perceived, that the 

 method pursued by Cesalpino, Morison, Ray, Tournefort, and 

 Bachmann could never do justice to those natural affinities 

 which it was their object to discover, and that in this way only an 

 artificial though very serviceable arrangement could be attained, 

 while the exhibition of natural affinities must be sought by 

 other means. 



As regards the terminology of the parts of plants, which was 

 all that the morphology of the day attempted, Linnaeus simply 

 adopted all that was contained in the Isagoge of Jung, but 

 gave it a more perspicuous form, and advanced the theory of the 

 flower by accepting without hesitation the sexual importance 

 of the stamens, which was still but little attended to ; he thus 

 arrived at a better general conception of the flower, and this 



G 



