HOMEWARD BOUND 47 



society at large. Rousseau, writing (in later life) to 

 Linmmis, styles himself ' a very ignorant but very zealous 

 disciple of your disciples. Alone with. Nature and you, 

 I pass delicious hours in country rambles, and I draw 

 more profit from your " Philosophia Botanica " than from 

 all the books on morals. I amuse my second childhood by 

 making a small collection of fruits and seeds. If among 

 your treasures in this line you can find some cast-off 

 gleanings (rebuis) with which you might make some 

 one happy, deign to think of me. Farewell, sir, con- 

 tinue to open and interpret to man the book of nature. 

 For me, I am content to decipher some words after you 

 in the feuillet of the vegetable kingdom.' Such flattery 

 would have intoxicated and capsized Linnaeus had he 

 not been well ballasted. 



Paris said (behind his back), ' C'est un jeune en- 

 thusiaste qui brouille tout, qui n'a d'autre merite et de 

 gloire que d'avoir mis 1'anarchie dans la botanique.' 



' Don't laugh, good people,' said Guettard, ' don't 

 laugh at Linnaeus ; the time will come when he will 

 laugh at you all.' 



Rousseau was himself one of those who tried best to 

 compose a botanical system ; perhaps he was too much of 

 a poet to complete it. The natural system baffled him ; 

 he had not sufficient data to go upon. Yet it dawned 

 on him like sunrise, lighting up the things he had been 

 groping amongst (ideas of the equality and brotherhood 

 of men) to see the all-fatherhood of God manifest in all 

 these vegetable families of the earth and their likenesses. 



