84 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 



ture, is rendered comprehensible only by the confident 

 style as well as by the neatness of his diagnoses, by 

 which, with a single stroke, he put an end to the indefinite 

 character of Natural History, and appeared to contem- 

 poraries and posterity as a lawgiver. The exaltation of 

 species as the basis of all systematic comprehension had 

 never been so explicitly proclaimed. His opinions cul- 

 minate in the maxim,'* " Reason teaches that at the 

 beginning of things, a pair of each particular species was 

 created." But with Linnaeus this said reason looks rather 

 strange, foi: it is subservient to the strictest scriptural 

 belief, and he endeavours to harmonize his geological 

 conceptions with this standpoint. 



One very effective geological phenomenon was espe- 

 cially striking to him, namely, the upheaval of a great 

 portion of the Scandinavian coast. It proceeds more 

 rapidly than the subsidence of another part; its phe- 

 nomena are far mightier; and thus the idea might be 

 formed that the continent had risen from the sea in regu- 

 lar progression. " I believe that I am not straying far 

 from the truth," he says, " if I affirm that in the infancy 

 of the world all the mainland was submerged and cov- 

 ered by an enormous ocean, save one single island in 

 this immeasurable sea, on which all animals dwelt and 

 plants grew luxuriantly." '^ 



It follows that all species of plants likewise existed in 

 this lovely garden, as it is expressly said that Adam 

 named every animal; consequently all insects must have 

 been assembled in Paradise, but insects cannot be imag- 

 ined without plants. Linnaeus then makes the first at- 

 tempt at animal geography by making the animals dis- 

 perse themselves from this centre. But the summary 



