PANEGYRISTS OF LINN^US. 139 



disgust. People are in some measure fond of reading attacks, but they 



generally dislike the aggressor, they despise and laugh at him. You 

 " may do as you please ; I only advise you, for my part, as a friend. 

 " A general must not protraft a war to too great lengths. He frequently 

 " brings the enemy to do that which he did not expeft. Thus Ham- 

 " BERGER might gain friends, who would be down upon ail you do, and 

 " furnish him with stratagems, which, till now, he never could think of." 



The tolerant condu£l of Linnaeus towards the introducers and par- 

 tisans of other botanical systems, became publicly manifest during his 

 reform in HoUa7id. " There are," writes he, " several systems in bo- 

 " tany, some easier, safer and more commodious in certain points, others 



more general. I do not know what blindness has brought men to sec 

 <' every other system with an indignant eye. It is much to be wished 

 ♦•^ that every beginner would habituate himself to all systems. If tlie 

 " plants have been examined according to them all, the beginner can ripen 

 " his opinions, which so seldom happens, owing to the predileftion gene- 



rally bestowed upon one single system, in preference to all the rest*." 



When LiNN.«:us, at an advanced period of life, published for the 

 last time in the year 1766, hisSvsTEM of Natur e, that monument of 

 his immortality, he concluded it with the following declaration of his 

 past condu61;. " I have ranged through the thick and shady forests of 

 " nature, I have to and fro found sharp and perplexing thorns, I have 

 « as much as possible avoided them ; but learned at the same time, that 



• Hinc omnes methodi addiscendas sunt. — Nescio, quid fascinat homines ut non possint al- 

 teram methodum videre absque pcrturbatione. — Optandum foret, ut tyrones omnibus ad- 

 juesccrent methodis. — Postquam examinaverint juniores Botanici plantas secundum omncs 

 Biethodos, apti sunt ad ferendum matura de singulis judicia, quas tarn raro alias occurrunt, 

 cum communiter apud omnes unica in pretio sit methodus, reliquae autem minus. See Praefat. 

 ad Classes plantarum. Lugd.Bat. 1738. 



T 2 " foresight 



