Xo8 THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



latively some doubtless unproductive system of thought, devoted himself 

 entirely to ascertaining the relation of forms to one another — an investi- 

 gation which was so suited to his peculiar gifts. That in doing so he accepted 

 the old biblical conception of nature was as natural in his day as for a system- 

 atist of our own day to embrace the theory of descent without going closely 

 into the question of its justification. He was thereby able, unhindered by any 

 theoretical barriers, freely to develop and take advantage of that extraor- 

 dinary capacity for observing natural objects and summarizing his obser- 

 vations which was peculiar to him, and thus to establish the mastery over 

 research-material on which modern biology is based. 



Linnxus was, as has already been mentioned, essentially autodidactic, 

 in so far as the education he received from others was highly deficient and 

 fragmentary. Nevertheless, the conditions under which he was trained for 

 his life's work were particularly suited to his natural genius. The powers 

 of observation which formed one of his most conspicuous characteristics had 

 received from his very earliest years in his father's garden, under his guidance 

 and under the influence of the love of the vegetable world imparted by him, 

 such stimulating exercise as to afford every opportunity for the full develop- 

 ment of his extraordinary sense of form. During his youth his teachers gave 

 him a knowledge of such biological literature as then existed, without at 

 the same time burdening him with any theories out of which he would 

 afterwards have had to work himself up, while at an early age he gained 

 that liberty of action which is the indispensable condition for anyone who, 

 in whatever sphere his work may lie, wishes to create something new. The 

 works of his youth, the small lists of plants which he drew up and which 

 were not printed until our own day, already give clear evidence of where 

 his chief interest lay; he enumerates the plants he collected in various places, 

 with observations as to their occurrence, and by means of them he tests the 

 various systems which he found amongst his predecessors, principally Tour- 

 nefort, but also Ray and Rivinus, without, however, finding any real satis- 

 faction in them. On the contrary, we find from his notes that he felt himself 

 called upon to reform the science of botany, which he considered to have 

 seriously degenerated. Thus he became aware, through a criticism in a jour- 

 nal, of Camerarius's discovery of sex in plants, which a French naturalist 

 had accepted, and he was so excited by the news that he at once devoted 

 himself to making a close study of the problem. He immediately realized 

 that in the hitherto neglected stamens and pistils one had to do with the 

 flower's most vital organs, and from that point of view alone their employ- 

 ment as a basis for systematic classification was justified. Thus arose his 

 sexual system, the first step towards the realization of the ambition he had 

 set himself to attain: a general system for natural objects. And at the same 

 time he made himself quite clear as to the principles on which such a system- 



