CHAP, ii.] Organs from Ccsalpino to Linnaeus. 85 



and every plant by a name. Like his predecessors, Linnaeus 

 regarded morphology and general theoretical botany only as 

 means to be used for discovering the principles of terminology 

 and definition, with a view to the improvement of the art of 

 describing plants. 



We have hitherto spoken chiefly of the manner in which 

 Linnaeus dealt with his subject in matters of detail ; in his 

 inner nature he was a schoolman, and that in a higher degree 

 than even Cesalpino himself, who should rather be called an 

 Aristotelian in the strict sense of the word. But to say that 

 Linnaeus' mode of thought is thoroughly scholastic is virtually 

 saying that he was not an investigator of nature in the modern 

 meaning of the word ; we might point to the fact that Linnaeus 

 never made a single important discovery throwing light on the 

 nature of the vegetable world ; but that would still not prove 

 that he was a schoolman. 



True investigation of nature consists not only in deducing 

 rules from exact and comparative observation of the phe- 

 nomena of nature, but in discovering the genetic forces from 

 which the causal connexion, cause and effect may be derived. 

 In the pursuit of these objects, it is compelled to be constantly 

 correcting existing conceptions and theories, producing new 

 conceptions and new theories, and thus adjusting our own 

 ideas more and more to the nature of things. The under- 

 standing does not prescribe to the objects, but the objects to 

 the understanding. The Aristotelian philosophy and its 

 medieval form, scholasticism, proceeds in exactly the con- 

 trary way ; it is not properly concerned with acquiring new 

 conceptions and new theories by means of investigation, for 

 conceptions and theories have been once for all established ; 

 experience must conform itself to the ready-made system 

 of thought ; whatever does not so conform must be dialecti- 

 cally twisted and explained till it apparently fits in with the 

 whole. From this point of view the intellectual task consists 

 essentially in this twisting and turning of facts, for the general 



