Burnet's Outlines of Botany. 591 



REVIEWS. 



Art. I. Outlines of Botany, including a General History of the 

 Vegetable Kingdom, in which Plants are arranged according to the 

 System of Natural Affinities. By Gilbert T. Burnet, F.L.S., Pro- 

 fessor of Botany in King's College, London, and Senior President 

 of the Westminster Medical Society, Two volumes 8vo, 1 190 pages. 

 London, 1835. 1/. 145. 



These outlines, the author informs us in an advertisement, 

 *' contain the heads of the Subjective Course of Lectures an- 

 nually delivered by the Author in King's College, London." 

 By Subjective Botany, the young gardener may be informed, is 

 meant the mode of teaching the science, in contradistinction to 

 the things to be taught ; the discussion of the tools of an art, in 

 contradistinction to the discussion of its operation ; the mode of 

 putting a book together, of arranging and writing it, rather than 

 the subject to be treated of in that book. 



" The distinction between a science, and the things it treats of, though of 

 primary importance, is too often overlooked j and the means mistaken for the 

 end to be attained; a fatal error, and one that leads to many misconceptions. 

 For the latter are immutable, the former always changing : that is but the in- 

 strument of knowledge, these the matters to be known. 



" Physical truths are as much truths, though known for the first time, by 

 man, to-day, as those which have been discovered a thousand years. Their 

 antiquity is equal, though known but now ; nor would it have been less, had 

 they by man been never learned. They were from the first discoverable, 

 though not previously discovered ; and, if again forgotten, they would not cease 

 to be. 



" If physical truths were only known in fragments, however great their 

 accumulation, science could scarcely be said to exist ; it is not until reduced 

 by system, that their indefinite acquirement can be profitably sought ; for what 

 addition to an unordered host of facts can be esteemed an advantageous in- 

 crease ? Still it is evident that system does not change the import of the 

 truths that it collects, nor vary the nature of the facts that it arranges. System 

 is but the disciple of science ; as system, it adds nothing to, neither does it 

 diminish aught, the store of facts it comprehends : how much soever systems 

 vary, facts change not ; these remain unaltered, however vaguely ordered, 

 however effectively disposed. Bad systems may impede, and good ones may 

 assist, the progress of discovery, as they more or less commodiously distribute 

 truths already known; still even the best are but the vehicles of learning, and 

 not the knowledge they are destined to convey. Hence it is matter, not 

 method, that deserves our chief consideration ; foi", as the subjects known 

 increase, and the objects to be obtained are varied, so systems must conform to 

 the principles of the one, and be modified to suit the purposes of the other. 



" The revolutions of methods which mark epochs in philosophy should 

 therefore merely be regarded as stages of maturation ; and it should be 

 remembered, that such plans as may have been well fitted for a former state or 

 condition of knowledge, may be utterly unsuited to the present ; and again, 

 that such as may be effective aids, for a certain purpose, may be wholly inef- 

 ficient for another : truth is the subject, its discovery the object, of philosophy ; 

 and truth is eternal. Hence the things to be known are always the same, 

 how much soever the successive discoveries of its several parts may modify 



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