38 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



des Forschens und Untersuchens in alle Nebenzweige dieser 

 Kenntnisse." ^ Even Professor Lovejoy, who is inclined to dis- 

 pute the originahty and magnitude of Linnaeus' s contribution 

 to science, concedes that "by the force and serious enthusiasm 

 of his personality, and by the example of his admirably exact 

 observation, Linnaeus stimulated a prodigious amount of ardent 

 and careful botanical and zoological research on the part of 

 others."* This influence of Linnaeus and his fellow scholars 

 and disciples contributed greatly to the end that '" Careful ob- 

 servation of nature and accurate experimentation had at last 

 become . . . respectable. . . ."^ Buffon's dictum that "The 

 only good science is the knowledge of facts " ® expresses the 

 spirit underlying the widespread study of the natural sciences 

 in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Bartram's indebted- 

 ness to both Linnaeus and Buffon has already been noted. 



Around Bartram's dual attitude towards nature — the scien- 

 tific and the Quaker — other encrustations are perceptible. For 

 one thing, the aesthetic appeal of nature runs through all of 

 Bartram's reactions. Nature is beauty; being a manifestation 

 of God's greatness and benevolence it could not help being 

 beautiful. The objective scientist in Bartram occasionally ob- 

 serves a phenomenon in nature which clashes with the concept 

 of benevolence: his description, for instance, of a spider pounc- 

 ing upon a bee, inflicting wounds like a "butcher," and finally 

 devouring it, is quite horribly realistic.'^ But such disquieting 

 moments are rare in Bartram. Nourished upon the ideals of the 

 mid-eighteenth century, Bartram accepts the physical world of 

 God as wholly good, leans heavily upon the doctrine of the 

 superiority of Nature and man in a primitive state over Nature 

 and man subjected to the processes of civilization, and preaches 

 sensibility and humanitarianism. Yet the objective scientist 



^ " Vorrede des Ubersetzers." Retsen durch Nord- und Sud-Karolina, etc. 

 Aus dem Englischen mit Anmerkungen von E. A. W. Zimmermann. Berlin, 1793. 



* '" The Place of Linnaeus in the History of Science," by Arthur O. Lovejoy. 

 Popular Science Monthly, LXXI (1907), 501. 



" John Herman Randall, The Making of the Modern Mind, p. 264. 



* Quoted in L. Ducros, Les Encyclopedistes, 326. See Randall, op. cit., 264 

 and 280. 



■^ Travels, xxix-xxx-xxxi. 



