74 THE EVOLUTION OF MAN. 



Botany, as the most important collective term, although 

 incessant strife has been waged as to the particular meaning 

 of the term. Linnaeus himself gave no clear, scientific defi- 

 nition of the real nature of organic kind, or species. On the 

 contrary, he took as a basis the mythological views of this 

 subject, which the prevailing religious " faith," grounded on 

 the Mosaic History of Creation, had introduced, and which 

 are even now very generally maintained. He even adhered 

 directly to the Mosaic History of Creation, and assumed 

 that, as it is written in Genesis " male and female created 

 he them," there had originally been but one pair of each 

 animal and vegetable kind, or species. He supposed that 

 all the individuals of a kind were descendants of the 

 original pair created on the sixth day of Creation. Lin- 

 naeus held that only a single individual was created of 

 those organisms which are hermaphrodite, that is, which 

 unite in their bodies both sexual organs, for these already 

 possessed in themselves the qualifications for propagating 

 their own species. In further developing these mytho- 

 logical ideas, Linnaeus adhered to the Mosaic account 

 and utilized the so-called " Deluge," and the myth of the 

 ark of Noah connected with it, to explain the choiology 

 of organisms, the doctrine, that is, of the geographical and 

 topographical distribution of animal and vegetable species. 

 In harmony with Moses he assumed that all plants, animals, 

 and human beings had been destroyed by the Deluge, with 

 the exception of a single pair, which was saved in the ark 

 to perpetuate the species, and which was put on land on 

 Mount Ararat after the waters had subsided. Mount 

 Ararat seemed to him specially adapted for this disembark- 

 ation, because it is in a warm climate and rises to a height 



