THE JUSSIEUS AND THE NATURAL METHOD. 263 



his nephew, who was at the same time his successor and continuator; without 

 whom we should with difficulty have penetrated the secret of his tliouglits or 

 possessed the authentic explanation of his catalogue. 



" He regarded botany," Laurent tells us, "not as a science of memory or of no- 

 menclature, but as a science of combinations, founded on a thorough knowledge 

 of all the characters of each plant. He compiled, every day, materials for form- 

 ing that natural order which is the touchstone of botanists. Always thinking 

 himself not sufficiently advanced, he neglected to publish his first essays, and 

 sought the impiovement of his work. This distrust of himself contii.iually ar- 

 rested him, and even brought him to the point of doubting of all." * * * * 

 This last and curious phrase is one which any other than Bernard would scarcely 

 have suggested, and which reveals a species of superiority to which few attain 

 or even aspire. " He wrote little," continues Laurent, "but observed much ; and 

 the fruits of his labor would perhaps have been lost to science but for a favorable 

 circumstance, which obliged him to give a practical exposition of his general 

 system in the arrangement of plants." The favorable circumstance was the fol- 

 lowing : Louis XV having seen at Saint Germain the plantations in which the 

 Marechal de Noailles had indulged his taste, by collecting the trees and shrubs 

 of foreign countries, was struck with the fancy of forming similar ones at 

 Trianon, and of founding there a school of botany. With this object, and 

 guided by Lemonnier, then first physician of the royal infants of France, he cast 

 his eyes on Bernard, who "being constrained," as Laurent expresses it, "to 

 adopt some arrangement, judged it expedient to substitute his new plan for the 

 ancient methods." Thus we see on how mere a contingency depended our 

 possession of this nao plan; without the visit of Louis XV to Saint Germain, 

 Bernard would not have been constrained to adopt an arrangement, and quite 

 probably would never have written his catalogue. 



llespecting those ancient methods for which he substituted his new plan, Lau- 

 rent has conveyed to us the views of his uncle : " Those methods were, according 

 to him, only descriptive tables in which the plants were arranged agreeably to a 

 conventional order adopted for the convenience of those who study them. The 

 science, limited to these methods, is a fiictitious science, very remote from that 

 of the natural order, which is the true one, and which consists in a knowledge of 

 the real relations of plants and their organization." * * * * "When a man," 

 adds Laurent, " has combined the characters of plants to such an extent as to be 

 able, in an unknown species, to determine the existence of many from the pres- 

 ence of a single one, to refer on the spot this species to the order which suits it; 

 when he has destroyed the prejudice, so disparaging to botany, that it is to be 

 regarded as a science of memory and nomenclature, and has made of it a science 

 of combinations which affords aliment to thought and imagination, that man may 

 be called the creator, or at least the restorer of the science. Others will, perhaps, 

 extend its bounds, but he will have been the first to point the way, to trace the 

 plan, to establish the principles. M. de Jussieu has not, it is true, consigned 

 them to any book, but in the garden of Trianon we recognize the conception 

 of the author. The same conception reigns in the recent arrangement of the 

 Jar din Royal of Paris, formed upon the model of that of Trianon, and only differ- 

 ing from it in some points for greater facility of study." Finally, Laurent 

 arrives at the higher view which characterizes the Jussieus in botany, at the 

 key which has given them the natural order, the principle, namely, of the subor- 

 dination of characters. "In the examination of characters, Bernard had remarked 

 that some were more general than others, and should furnish the first divisions. 



but presently resuming Lis own : I could not resist the desire (he said) of speakinp^ for a 

 moment the language of M. Franklin. They met again at a public sitting of the Academy 

 of Sciences ; they here embraced amidst the acclamations of the spectators, who exclaimed 

 that it was Solon embracing Sophocles." (Condorcet: Viede Voltaire.) 



