220 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



prompted by the needs of the medical profession, which 

 studied animals as affording an insight into the analo- 

 gous structure and functions of the human body ; l and 

 plants, because they largely furnished the materials for 

 the preparation of medicines. To this must further 

 be added the practical interests of agriculture, of garden- 

 ing, and of the artificial culture of flowers and exotic 

 plants, and the breeding of domestic animals. All 

 these interests, however stimulating they may have been 

 and still are, introduce an element of artificiality into 

 the study of nature. They have all a greater concern 

 for natural objects, be they beautiful or useful, than 

 they have for nature itself. From this artificial posi- 

 tion the true sciences of nature had to emancipate them- 

 selves by slow degrees and with many efforts. Ever since 

 the time of Linnaeus, through whose labours the system- 

 atic attempts received a kind of finality, and even in 

 his own writings, great discussions were carried on as to 

 19. the difference between a natural and an artificial order of 



Artificial 



and natural plants and animals. " The natural orders." 2 says Linnaeus, 



systems. * 



" teach us the nature of plants, the artificial orders enable 

 us to recognise plants. The natural orders, without a 

 key, do not constitute a method ; the method ought to be 

 available without a master. . . . The habit of a plant 

 must be secretly consulted. A practised botanist will 



1 Referring to Albrecht von 

 Haller, Victor Carus (' Gesch. d. 

 Zoologie,' p. 567) says, " Through 

 the leap which physiology took, 

 thanks to his labours, zootomical 

 researches developed in a direction 

 which brought them into complete 

 subjection to physiology, with a 

 neglect of the independent import- 

 ance which belongs to them. . . . 



It diverted attention from the im- 

 mediate object of zoology, the ex- 

 planation of animal forms and their 

 variety, to the more remote problem 

 the explanation of the phenomena 

 of life." 



2 Quoted by Whewell ('Hist.,' 

 vol. iii. p. 268) from the ' Genera 

 Plantarum' (1764). 



