Chap, ii.] Organs from Cesalpino to Linnaeus. 83 



not from differences of function, but from the number and mode 

 of union, which are of no importance for the sexual function. 

 We meet with this error in Leibnitz and Burckhard, who are 

 mentioned here merely to defend Linnaeus from the charge 

 repeatedly brought against him by his contemporaries that he 

 was indebted to these two writers for the idea of his sexual 

 system. They erroneously found in the great physiological 

 importance of the sexual organs a reason for deriving from their 

 differences the principles of division that were to found a 

 system ; this error in theory Linnaeus shared with them, but 

 they did not correct it in practice, as Linnaeus did, by confining 

 himself to purely morphological features in working out his 

 system. What the renowned philosopher 1 incidentally uttered 

 in the year 1701 on the matter in question is moreover so un- 

 important and so indistinct, that Linnaeus could not gain much 

 from it ; what Burckhard 2 says on the subject in his often- 

 quoted letter to Leibnitz (1702) is indeed much better, and 

 comes near to Linnaeus' idea ; but it is a very long way from 

 the hints there given to the completion of the well-articulated 

 and highly practical system which Linnaeus constructed. 



The botanists of the 16th century, and in the main even 

 Morison and Ray, had in one-sided fashion devoted their 

 chief attention to distinguishing species, Bachmann and 

 Toumefort to the establishment of generic characters, while 

 they neglected species ; Linnaeus, on the contrary, applied 

 equal care and much greater skill to describing both genera and 

 species. He reduced to practical shape the suggestion which 

 Bachmann had left to his successors, and so must be regarded, 

 if not as the inventor, at least as the real founder of the binary 

 nomenclature of organisms. 



It is only fulfilling the duty of a historian to state the sources 



1 Printed in Jessen's « Botanik der Gegenwart tind Vorzeit,' p. 2S7. 



2 ' Epistola ad Godofredum Gulielmum Leibnitzium etc. cum Lnurentii 

 Heisteri praefatione,' Helmstadii, 1750. 



G 2 



