LTNNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. 79 



temutic botanist in his nephew. It seems to me that Jeremy 

 Bentham and his school did for Eugland by purely intellectual 

 persuasion, and in an orderly and constitutional manner, very 

 much what the literary precursors of the Revolution of France 

 did for the French, though the means by which effect was given 

 to their ideas were far different. In the social circle of the 

 Benthams, the Mills, fatlier and son, were conspicuous figures. 

 It is a noteworthy fact that John Stuart Mill, like Whcwell, 

 had a deep conviction of the intellectual and educational value of 

 classificatoi'y botany. Mill's own botanical tastes did not drive 

 him, as they did Bentham, from more abstract studies; and 

 tliough he was all his life an assiduous amateur botanist, his 

 contributions to the subject never reached a higher field of dis- 

 tinction than the records of localities contained in a county Flora. 

 The apparent inclination of the members of the Benthamian circle 

 towards botanical study seemed to me, however, to be more than 

 accidental. That in point of fact it was so is, I think, indicated 

 by the following passage from Mill's ' Outlines of Logic '*: — 



" The proper arrangement, for example, of a code of laws 

 depends on the same scientific conditions as the classifications 

 in natural history ; nor could there be a better preparatory 

 discipline for tliat important function than the study of the prin- 

 ciples of a natural arrangement, not only in the abstract, but in 

 their actual application to the class of phenomena for which they 

 were first elaborated, and which are still the best school for 

 learning their use. Of this the great authority on codification, 

 Bentham, was perfectly aware ; and his early Fragment on 

 Government, the admirable introduction to a series of writings 

 unequalled in their department, contains clear and just views (as far 

 as they could go) on the meaning of a natural arrangement, such 

 as could scarcely have occurred to any one who lived anterior to 

 the age of Linnaeus and Bernard de Jussieu." 



Now the case of Darwin shows in the most striking way how 

 far beyond the field of phenomena, for the exjjlanation of which 

 a scientific theory was first devised, its influence upon human 

 life and thought may ultimately come to extend. Linueeus 

 could never for a moment have dreamt that the methods of classi- 

 fication which he perfected would stimulate a Bentham in the 

 pursuit of an ideal jurisprudence, to, in turn, stimulate, through 

 the indirect path of scientific method, the course in life of the 

 greatest systematic botanist of our time. The younger Bentham, 

 at any rate, repaid the debt with interest. If, as I think, 1 am 

 justified in saying he stood in the footsteps of Linujeus, we may 

 even admit that, though the mode of descent is sufficiently oblique, 

 he inherited the mantle of the master wliose memory we have met 

 this day to commemorate. 



* Vol. ii. pp. -'82, 283. 



