IMAGINARY KNOWLEDGE. 35S 



defects were severely felt : for instance, tlie vague and unscientific dis- 

 tinction of vegetables into trees, shrubs, and herbs, kept its ground till 

 the time of Linnseus. ' 



While it was thus imagined that the identification of a plant, by 

 means of its name, might properly be trusted to the common uncul- 

 tured faculties of the mind, and to what we may call the instinct of 

 language, all the attention and study which were bestowed on such 

 objects, were naturally employed in learning and thinking upon such 

 circumstances respecting them as were supplied by any of the common 

 channels through which knowledge and opinion flow into men's 

 minds. 



The reader need hardly be reminded that in the earlier periods of 

 man's mental culture, he acquires those opinions on which he loves 

 to dwell, not by the exercise of observation subordinate to reason ; 

 but, far more, by -his fancy and his emotions, his love of the marvel- 

 lous, his hopes and fears. It cannot surprise us, therefore, that the 

 earliest lore concerning plants which we discover in the records of the 

 past, consists of mythological legends, marvellous relations, and extra-' 

 ordinary medicinal qualities. To the lively fancy of the Greeks, the 

 Narcissus, which bends its head over the stream, was originally a 

 youth who in such an attitude became enamored of his own beauty : 

 the hyacinth, 4 on whose petals the notes of grief were traced (A i, A i), 

 recorded the sorrow of Apollo for the death of his favorite Hyacin- 

 thus : the beautiful lotus of India, 3 which floats with its splendid 

 flower on the surface of the water, is the chosen seat of the goddess 

 Lackshmi, the daughter of Ocean. 4 In Egypt, too, 5 Osiris swam on a 

 lotus-leaf, and Harpocrates was cradled in one. The lotus-eaters of 

 Homer lost immediately their love of home. Every one knows how 

 easy it would be to accumulate such tales of wonder or religion. 



Those who attended to the effects of plants, might discover in them 

 some medicinal properties, and might easily imagine more ; and when 

 the love of the marvellous was added to the hope of health, it is easy 

 to believe that men would be very credulous. We need not dwell upon 

 the examples of this. In Pliny's Introduction to that book of his 



* Lilium martagon. 



Ipse suos gemitus foliis inscribit et A i, A i, 



Flos habet inscriptiim funestaque litera ducta esL OVID. 



' Nelumbium speciosum. 



' Sprengel, Ge.vhichte der Botanik, i. 27. 6 Ib. L 28. 



