38 Artificial Systems and Terminology of Organs [Book i. 



Cesalpino comes before us, in strong contrast with the 

 simple-minded empiricism of the German fathers of botany, as 

 the thinker in presence of the vegetable world. Their main 

 task was the amassing descriptions of individual plants. Ces- 

 alpino made the material gathered by experience the subject of 

 earnest reflection ; he sought especially to obtain universals from 

 particulars, important principles from sensuous perceptions ; but 

 as his forms of thought were entirely Aristotelian, it was inevit- 

 able that his interpretation of the facts should introduce into 

 them much that would have to be got rid of subsequently by 

 the inductive method. Cesalpino differs also from the German 

 botanists in another respect ; he did not rest satisfied with the 

 general impression produced by the plants, but carefully 

 examined the separate parts and paid attention to the small 

 and concealed organs ; he was the first who converted observa- 

 tion into real scientific research ; and thus we find in him a 

 remarkable union of inductive natural science and Aristotelian 

 philosophy, a mixture which gives a peculiar character to the 

 theoretical efforts of his successors down to Linnaeus. 



Cesalpino was moreover much before his time in his mode 

 of contemplating the vegetable kingdom, seeking always for 

 philosophical combinations and comprehensive points of view. 

 His work which appeared in 1583 exercised no perceptible 

 influence on his contemporaries ; a trace of such influence 

 only may be seen in Kaspar Bauhin thirty or forty years 

 later, while the work of the botanists who followed Bauhin 

 down to 1670 was confined everywhere to increasing the 

 knowledge of individual plants. With this object travels were 

 undertaken after 1600 to all parts of the world; many new 

 botanic gardens were added to the few which had been 

 founded in the 16th century — as at Giessen in 161 7, at Paris 

 in 1620, at Jena in 1629, at Oxford in 1632, at Amsterdam 

 in 1646, at Utrecht in 1650. Instead of endeavouring to 

 embrace with their labours the whole vegetable kingdom, 

 botanists preferred to devote themselves to the examination of 



