BOTANICAL SUBJECTS. 23 



Searchers after truth have thought it necessary to invent 

 innumerable terms to make things clear, but which unfortunately 

 often have the opposite effect. Possibly they may have thought 

 that the invention of all these terms was the end of human 

 exertion, instead of the means of acquiring what is to be the end 

 of knowledge. 



Every variation of an organ, or part has been given a new 

 name, just as every variation of an individual was supposed to 

 mean a new species. 



There are not many minds, which have the power of keeping 

 more than one idea before them at one time, therefore the more 

 simple, the briefer, and the clearer the mode of expressing that idea 

 is, the less chance it has of escaping the grip of human intelligence. 



Hundreds of controversies have been and are caused simply by 

 differences of words. Can it be denied that many have a love for 

 coining new terms on the slightest provocation, for the sake of 

 symmetry, regardless of the impediments they thereby place in the 

 way of their thoughts being understood ? 



It was only the other day that Prof. Max Muller in a " Lecture 

 in defence of Lectures " warned us* that, " "Words will govern us, 

 unless we govern them." He added, " How then can we account 

 for the fact that every system of philosophy from Thales to Kant,, 

 is contradicted by another system ? It is chiefly, if not entirely,, 

 language that has thrown the apple of discord among us. We 

 call the same thing by different names, and different things by the 

 same name, and then we wonder that, as at the time of the Tower 

 of Babel, so even now, we do not understand one another's speech." 



One great function of philosophy is to unify and simplify the 

 mass of human knowledge, and thus render innumerable words 

 useless. There will come a time, I doubt not, when all this use- 

 lessness will be cast off like the old skin of a snake. One would, 

 however, wish that that time were a little nearer. 



The Rev. M. J. Berkeley, in his " Introduction to Cryptogamic 

 Botany," at p. 6, said, " The difficulty is just as great, when in 

 extensive and truly natural genera, it is desired to separate one 

 species from another, as when the objects of separation and 

 definition are the main or subordinate divisions of any one great 



* Who can better warn us against the trouble that can be caused by words 

 than Prof. Max. Muller ? 



