SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 107 

 kind, and everything that happens happens at His command and under His 

 guidance. No other explanation of natural phenomena is looked for. How- 

 little Linnieus actually interested himself in the general scientific questions 

 that occupied the minds of his contemporaries is at once shown by the fact 

 that even in the twelfth edition of his Sy sterna natura he still lets the universe 

 consist of the ancient four elements, fire, air, water, and earth; he seems not 

 to have been aware of the fact that many decades earlier Stahl had published 

 his new theory of the process of combustion. On the other hand, in this and 

 in other works of his later years there occur a number of ideas contributing 

 to a mechanical explanation of life that are in striking contrast to his ro- 

 mantic piety. In the above-mentioned edition of Systema natura he defines 

 (on p. 1 5) animal life as a hydraulic machine which is kept going by an 

 ethereal-electric fire maintained by breathing ;i on the other hand there comes 

 in here the universally known, sublimely poetical description of God's om- 

 nipotence: how he saw the Eternal wherever he went, and how his brain 

 reeled when he saw traces of Him in everything, from the life of the minutest 

 creatures here on earth to the movements of the heavenly bodies, "which 

 are upheld in their empty nothingness by the first movement, the essence 

 of all things, the mainspring and director of all causes, the Lord and Master 

 of this world; should we call Him Fate, we should not be wrong, for every- 

 thing hangs upon His finger; should we call Him Nature, we should not be 

 wrong either, for all things have emanated from Him; should we call Him 

 Providence, we should likewise be right, for everything happens according 

 to His nod and His will." The strange, half-pantheistic conception of God 

 that is here apparent occurs in Seneca, whose Quastiones naturales Linnaeus 

 cites in this connexion and often elsewhere; besides which he quotes in the 

 work in question the Bible, Aristotle, Cesalpino, and van Helmont in support 

 of his theory of the universe and of life-phenomena. To Galileo's physics, 

 Newton's astronomy, and Stahl's chemistry, on the other hand, he has paid 

 no attention; at any rate, there are no quotations that would indicate his 

 having done so. 



His gifts as a systematician 

 At the time when polemics were levelled at him, Linnasus was accused of 

 Aristoteleanism in a derogatory sense. This accusation may have a certain 

 amount of justification, but it is likely in all ages to be laid at the door of 

 everyone desirous of arranging things according to formal principles, and 

 that was what Linnasus desired, just as it was exactly what biology in his 

 time needed. Far from blaming him for it, therefore, posterity should, on 

 the contrary, be grateful to him for having, instead of working out specu- 



^ Is it possible that the "fire-machine" constructed by Triewald, which Linnaeus saw in 

 his youth in the mine at Dannemora, may have been recalled to his mind and have given rise 

 to this curious definition? 



