1 1 o Development of the Natural System under [BOOK i. 



held to the dictum just quoted from Linnaeus, and therefore 

 regarded themselves as his genuine disciples, the founders of 

 the natural system had as good a right to the title, not because 

 they followed his nomenclature and method of diagnosis, but 

 because they strove after exactly that object which he had 

 placed first in the science, the construction of the natural 

 system ; they were really the men whom he had meant when 

 he spoke of ' methodici ' and ' systematic!.' The German, English, 

 and Swedish collectors of plants adhered to the less profound, 

 every-day, practical precepts of their master ; the founders of 

 the natural system followed the deeper traces of his knowledge. 

 This direction proved to be the only one endowed with living 

 power, the true possessor of the future. 



The efforts of Jussieu, Joseph Gartner, De Candolle, Robert 

 Brown, and their successors up to Endlicher and Lindley, are 

 not marked only by the fact that they did truly seek to exhibit 

 the gradations of natural affinities by means of the natural 

 system ; equally characteristic of these men is their firm belief 

 in the dogma of the constancy of species as defined by Lin- 

 naeus. Here at once was a hindrance to their efforts ; the 

 idea of natural relationship, on which the natural system 

 exclusively rests, necessarily remained a mystery to all who 

 believed in the constancy of species ; no scientific meaning 

 could be connected with this mysterious conception ; and yet 

 the farther the inquiry into affinities proceeded, the more 

 clearly were all the relations brought out, which connect 

 together species, genera, and families. Pyrame de Candolle 

 developed with great clearness a long series of such affinities as 

 revealed to us by comparative morphology, but how were these 

 to be understood, so long as the dogma of the constancy of 

 species severed every real objective connection between two 

 related organisms? Little indeed could be made of these 

 acknowledged affinities ; still, in order to be able to speak of 

 them and describe them, recourse was had to indefinite 

 expressions, to which arbitrary and figurative meanings could 



