SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 115 

 anatomist; true, he did not fail to urge the study of anatomy as well, but his 

 own gifts lay far rather in work upon living nature than at the dissecting- 

 table. Of his purely morphological observations, on the other hand, many 

 are of lasting value; he thus established the fact that all leaves, both 

 plant leaves and flower-petals, go through a common process of develop- 

 ment, a discovery very often attributed to Goethe. But when he tries 

 his hand at comparative anatomy, he usually fails, as when he com- 

 pares the parts of plants and animals: marrow and spinal marrow, skin and 

 bark, etc. 



Phenologkal and geographical biology 

 On the other hand, Linnreus's contributions to the knowledge of the con- 

 ditions under which plants and animals live in their natural state are excep- 

 tionally many-sided. These natural observations of his, which occur scattered 

 throughout his disputations and platform speeches, bear witness not only to 

 his keenness of observation, but still more to his ability to combine and draw 

 conclusions from what he observed. Thus in the course of a graduation speech 

 ' ' On the Rise of the Habitable Earth, ' ' which begins with a discussion of how 

 all vegetable species were able to grow at once in paradise — they must 

 have existed there, for otherwise Adam would not have been able, as stated 

 in the Bible, to give them names — he expounded a theory of the propaga- 

 tion of plants, based on universal research-material, which was so well ar- 

 ranged that it still has its value at the present day. In other dissertations he 

 has contributed to the knowledge of the "stations" of plants (nowadays 

 termed "locations") and has described the influence of external conditions 

 upon the size, florescence, and distribution. All that is now called pheno- 

 logical, ecological, and geographical zoology and botany has consequently 

 its origin in him. Finally, in the disputations "Politia natura" and " CEconomia 

 naturx" he gives a radical explanation of all that we moderns call harmony 

 in nature: that all living creatures are adapted to certain conditions of life 

 and that the various plants and animals through their activities keep nature 

 in equipoise, so that "every vegetable species has been given its special insect 

 for the purpose of keeping her under control and to prevent her from spread- 

 ing too much and ousting her neighbours," while the Hymenoptera Para- 

 sitica and small birds look after the insects, and birds of prey after the small 

 birds. That he lets all this take place under God's constant guidance, to His 

 honour and for the benefit of man, should not in our time detract from 

 the value of the observations and the wealth of ideas expressed in these 

 works. 



The balance which Linnaeus thus found in nature he sought also in the 

 ethical sphere through his well-known speculations upon the "Nemesis 

 divina," which, however childish they may be in their detail, are neverthe- 

 less typical both of the man himself and of his time; both Leibniz and Vol- 



