DEAN CELSIUS COMES 119 



The arranging of the ' Hierobotanicon * was one of 

 the chief motives which made Celsius take Carl into 

 his house (though he afterwards became like a son to 

 Celsius, and he a father a true adoption). For this 

 purpose also he had free use of Celsius' library, one of 

 the richest and most valuable in Sweden. Here Carl 

 now met with Vaillant's small treatise on the sexes of 

 plants, 1 a review of which he had already read in the 

 Leipsic commentaries ; which gave him the first notion 

 of the sexual distinctions of flowers, the groundwork of 

 his celebrated system ; which, after all, contains the 

 spark of a grand illumination. Hitherto he had worked 

 on Tournefort's lines of classification by form. 



This was the germinating moment of his life. To 

 many of us it happens to be once, if only once, struck 

 dead, as it seems, to all outward things by the lightning 

 shock of an idea. This flash is what must be brought 

 to crystallisation by hard and continuous labour. This 

 idea immortalised Linnseus's name, and deservedly so, 

 since although this was no new notion that of sexes of 

 plants Linnaeus first applied it to classification and 

 elucidated it. ' Principles had to be imbibed in copious 

 draughts all through his education. The collision, 

 combination, harmonising of these constitute specula- 

 tive insight and conduct to original thought.' 2 The 

 Linnaean is an artificial system ; its author saw that fact 

 as plainly as we do. But, though imperfect, it was a 

 high road towards a new method of thought. 



1 Sermo de Structura Florum. 2 Bain on Mill. 



