PANEGYRISTS OF LINNMS. 
*39 
ct disgust. People are in some measure fond of reading attacks, but they 
44 generally dislike the aggressor, they despise and laugh at him. You 
44 may do as you please; I only advise you, for my part, as a friend, 
44 A general must not protraft a war to too great lengths. He frequently 
“ brings the enemy to do that which he did not expe£t. Thus Ham- 
t£ berger might gain friends, who would attack all you do, and furnish 
44 him with stratagems, which, till now, he never could think of.” 
The tolerant conduft of Linn.^us towards the introducers and par- 
tisans of other botanical systems, became publicly manifest during his 
reform in Holland. 44 There are,” writes he, 44 several systems in bo- 
44 tany, some easier, safer and more commodious in ceitain points, others 
44 more general. I do not know what blindness has brought men to see 
44 every other system with an indignant eye. It is much to be wished 
44 that every beginner would habituate himself to all systems. If the 
44 plants have been examined according to themall, the beginner can ripen 
44 his opinions, which so seldom happens, owing to the predileftion gene- 
44 rally bestowed upon one single system, in preference to all the test . 
When LinnjEUs, at an advanced period of life, published for the 
last time, in the year 1766, his System of Nature, that monument of 
his immortality, he concluded it with the following declaration of his 
past conduct 44 I have ranged through the thick and shady forests of 
44 nature, I have to and fro found sharp and perplexing thorns, I have 
44 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 perturbatione.— Optandum foret, ut tyrones omnibus ad- 
suescerent methodis — Postquam exmninaverint juniores Botanici plantas secundum omnes 
methodos apti sunt ad ferendum matura de singulis judicia, quae tam raro alias oecummt, 
cum communiter apud omnes unica in pretio sit methodus, reliqus autem minus. See Praefat. 
ad Classes plantamm. Lugd.Bat. 1738. 
T 2 
44 foresight 
