1464 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



surviving in conversation even to these days ? This doctrine is as 

 far from the facts of nature as may be : so how could it occur to so 

 intelligent and otherwise productive a man of science? One can 

 find no explanation but the social one ; that of a Genevan Swiss, 

 i.e. of mingled plebeian and patrician democratic environment 

 almost like old Rome itself, coming to Paris and its Court, while _^. 

 this was still strictly hierarchised in order of precedence, from ^j 

 page-in- waiting up to dukes, princes, and king; and the like in army 

 too. And since already accustomed also to his own church hierarchy, 

 from chorister and bell-boy behind priest at mass, up to bishop 

 and archbishop, cardinal and Pope, how easy for him to make his 

 fable of a like ascending ladder of organic beings up to Man — indeed, 

 how difficult to escape approving such hypothesis in such social 

 conditions; and with survival of it in what remains of their 

 atmosphere. And when we pass to Cuvier, historically the central 

 master of comparative anatomy and palaeontology, we cannot but 

 liken his animal classification, of five main types of animal Hfe, and 

 his active resistance to the evolutionary teaching of Geoffroy St. 

 Hilaire and others of his time — even Goethe among them — to the 

 five social orders of his day, which, as statesman and peer of 

 France, he no less stoutly defended against revolutionary spirit and 

 endeavour. Even in our greatest master Linnaeus — from whose 

 classic Systema Naturce all naturalists are agreed to date our 

 modern era — the like social influence is not far to seek. For in his 

 day Sweden was still the most conspicuous and glorious of the 

 military Powers of Europe ; and he had even his own turn of army 

 service, and as a quartermaster, an officer whose duties involve 

 very varied attention to the whole life of the regiment he has to 

 provide for. In such a militarised country and military atmosphere, 

 what more characteristic than its clearly defined grouping of 

 individuals into squad (or variety), these into company (or species), 

 these again into regiment (or genus) , and so on ; as his classification 

 so plainly does ? Given then a super-mind, habituated to this military 

 order of men, things, and thoughts, yet happily of overpowering 

 rural interests and orderly gardening ability as well — even to 

 delight of Dutch taste, then leading — what could be a more natural, 

 rational, and practical idea than that of applying the clearest and 

 most fully developed of all forms of social organisation so far, that 

 of his country's super-armies, to bring their order and method, their 

 marshalling and comprehensive review, into his ever recruited col- 

 lection and extending survey of the varied and multitudinous forms 

 of nature? With such a mind, such effective ambition of world- 

 conquest, albeit in a new way, what a superlative military organiser 

 was lost to Sweden, and spared to Europe! Note, however, that 

 Linne's Artificial System for botany, with all its high authority, 

 had to give place to the Natural System ; and this latter was estab- 



