Philosophical Character ofDecandolle. 203 



This, however, was not all ; for although, out of deference 

 to his colleague, he retains, in the first portion of his work, 

 the artificial method of determining a plant by the system of 

 dichotomy which Lamarck had invented, he proceeds, in all 

 the subsequent parts, to arrange them according to the prin- 

 ciples of that natural arrangement which the great Jussieu 

 had first reduced to a system. 



In his preface to the first volume of the Flore Fran^aise, 

 published in 1805, we find him thus contrasting the distinc- 

 tive merits of the natural and artificial methods. 



" The natural method," he says, " endeavours to place each 

 individual object in the midst of those with which it possesses 

 the greatest number of important points of resemblance ; the 

 artificial has no other end than that of enabling us to recog- 

 nize each individual plant, and to isolate it from the rest of 

 the vegetable kingdom. The former, being truly a science, 

 will serve as an immutable foundation for anatomy and phy- 

 siology to build upon ; whilst the second, being a mere em- 

 pirical art, may indeed offer some conveniences for practical 

 purposes, but does nothing towards enlarging the boundaries 

 of science, and places before us an indefinite number of arbi- 

 trary arrangements. The former, searching merely after truth, 

 has established its foundation on the organs that are of the 

 greatest importance to the existence of plants, without con- 

 sidering whether these organs are easy or difficult of observa- 

 tion ; the second, aiming only at facility, bases its distinctions 

 upon those which are most readily examined, and, therefore, 

 present the greatest facilities for study." 



We thus perceive, that at this early period the mind of 

 Mons. Decandolle was impx'essed with those philosophical 

 principles which his subsequent labours so materially calcu- 

 lated to establish and to diffuse ; and that, at a time when the 

 school of Sir J. E. Smith in England was still shackled by the 

 trammels of the Linneean system, this great botanist was him- 

 self taking advantage of those methods of arrangement, which, 

 in a more mature form, he afterwards presented to the world 

 for the guidance of others. 



But I am inclined to regard it as a peculiar proof, at once 

 of the caution and of the self-control which formed a distin- 



