15 



perience possible; and in the latter, all previous knowledge of its 

 object, perfect patience, and tact. There will arise continually 

 expressions of advancing science in systematical form, which are 

 required, moreover, as manuals. Looking back now upon what we 

 have gone through, we may say that we have rejected Oken's sys- 

 tem, and therein the absolute system of nature of the materialists, as 

 presented in Oken ; that,leavingthis, we have recognized its greater 

 doctrines, as they are represented in the earlier work of Fries, and 

 accepted them generally, without reference to system, or any hy- 

 pothesis of the origin of things ; that thence we have proceeded to 

 attempt a view of the position of Fries as a botanist, and of his way 

 of looking at nature, and expressed this last, so far as we were able, 

 in the form of sentences collected from his works. We have ac- 

 quired thus far, then, only principles, and with these we come to the 

 examination of the two other systems to which this paper is de- 

 voted, the system of Fries, and that of Endlicher. 



Fries has presented his disposition of plants, so far as he could 

 do it in a local flora, in his Flora of Schonen in Sweden (Flora 

 Scanica), 1 1835. From the Introduction to this the following out- 

 lines are drawn. The author begins with some general remarks on 

 the distinction of system and object, the impossibility of a merely 

 empirical system, the essential oneness of nature rejecting all sys- 

 tematic sections, and hence the necessity that even the natural 

 system should be at the same lime artificial, quoad formam. The 

 affinities of plants are as the myriads of stars; their families as the 

 constellations. The attempt to construct the system of nature from 

 the study of nature alone, is like building a tower of Babel, with the 

 hope of reaching the heavens, nor are the heaps wanting now, 

 nor the confusion of tongues. 



But this opinionisn ot to be misunderstood. In observation are 

 the foundations of all systematic construction, but this last is not 

 to be despised, nor confounded with the former. Linnaeus called 

 the natural families, without a key, a bell without a clapper. With- 

 out such a key, there is no end to the sundering of families. We 

 have laid aside the artificial LinnaBan system, but the natural sys- 

 tem also must be disposed artificially. Finally, it is an error to 

 consider any system vain because it is not perfect : better it were, 

 indeed, that it should contain principles of further evolution, but it 

 is well if it expound only one new and true idea. The natural sys- 

 tem respects the whole plant, of course. In the embryo the whole 

 is contained, and hence very eminent botanists have taken this as 

 their ground-principle, and a priori we cannot deny great force to 

 it. But it is the way with theories that opposite opinions are de- 

 fended with equal success and feebleness. So it is objected to this 

 principle that the embryo is not a single part, but contains in it all 

 the parts, and that we need not seek in its original obscurity what 

 is afterwards developed and made manifest in the plant itself. And 

 moreover, the differences of the embryo are often obscure and fal- 

 lacious, and hence the controversies concerning them, and the at- 



1 Corpus Florarum Provincialium Sueciae. I.Floram Scanicam scripsit Elias 

 Fries. Prof. Ups. Upsalis, 1835. 



