HIS WORK FOR POSTERITY 229 



and warmth each species requires.' Well might such a 

 revelation blind him by excess of light. We to whom 

 all this is as common daylight, can hardly conceive the 

 astonishment caused by the glory of the sunrise. 



And take a settled form low if you will, but beau- 

 tiful and interesting the Echinus. Kingsley says, < I 

 think a lecture simply on the Echinus would astonish 

 weak minds more utterly than anything I can guess at. 

 And not merely weak minds, but minds courageous 

 enough to follow a teacher into the realms of astonish- 

 ment.' 



While pioneering among the labyrinthine ' specula- 

 tions of men carried off their balance by the brilliant 

 physical discoveries ' of that age, it shows the steadi- 

 ness (' sound head') of Linnaeus that he was not carried 

 away that in the highest things and in the humblest 

 he sought truth only. 



It was a splendid, vivid, growing time, that eager 

 youth of science, so bubbling with novelties. Scientific 

 men were like children with new toys when ' forth a 

 new creation sprung.' Botanists were almost over- 

 whelmed with the riches that daily flowed in upon 

 them, when Linnasus also enriched the world with a 

 working plan, and, further, with the conviction that a 

 perfect system of classification was feasible. 



Science was no longer the dull war of polysyllables 

 that it had been between the Rajians and the Tourne- 

 fortians, for which the outer world cared no more than 

 for the differences between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. 



