ioo Artificial Systems and Terminology of [BOOK i. 



continuata, propagatio, observationes quotidianae, cotyledones,' 

 as proving the assertion that new species never appear. We 

 shall see further on to what surprising conclusions Linnaeus 

 was himself led by his dogma, when he had to take into 

 account the relations of affinity in genera and larger groups. 

 The species and the genus, he continues, are always the work 

 of nature, the variety is often that of cultivation the class and 

 the order depend both on nature and on art, which must mean 

 that the larger groups of the vegetable kingdom have not the 

 same objective reality as the species and the genus, but rest 

 partly on opinion. That Linnaeus estimated the labours of 

 the systematists after Cesalpino and the contributions of the 

 German fathers of botany up to Bauhin, as they have been 

 judged of in the present work, is shown by paragraph 163, 

 where he explains the word habit, and adds that Kaspar 

 Bauhin and the older writers had excellently divined (divina- 

 runt) the affinities of plants from their habit, and even real 

 systematists had often erred, where the habit pointed out to 

 them the right way. But he says that the natural arrange- 

 ment, which is the ultimate aim of botany, is founded, as the 

 moderns have discovered, on the fructification, though even 

 this will not determine all the classes. It is interesting there- 

 fore to observe how Linnaeus further on (paragraph 168) 

 directs, that in forming genera, though they must rest on the 

 fructification, yet it is needful to attend to the habit also, lest 

 an incorrect genus should be established on some insignificant 

 mark (levi de causa) : but this attention to the habit must be 

 managed with reserve, so as not to disturb the scientific 

 diagnosis. 



species is properly a conclusion from scholasticism, and ultimately from the 

 Platonic doctrine of ideas, and was therefore assumed as self-evident before the 

 time of Linnaeus, who only gave it a more distinct and conscious expression ; 

 his arguments from experience are without force. The strength of the dogma 

 lies in its relation to the platonico-scholastic philosophy, which the syste- 

 matists followed, more or less consciously, up to quite recent times. 



