84 TIE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 
scriber of Nature, 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 contemporaries and posterity as a lawgiver. The 
exaltation of species as the basis of all systematic com- 
prehension had never been so explicitly proclaimed. 
His opinions culminate in the maxim,™ “ Reason teaches 
that at the beginning of things, a pair of each particular 
species was created.” But with Linnzus this said reason 
looks rather strange, for 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 
regular 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 covered 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 
imagined without plants. Linnzus then makes the first 
attempt at animal geography by making the animals 
disperse themselves from this centre. But the summary 
