364 
LINNAEUS 
by its simplicity and applicability possessed an unques¬ 
tionable advantage. It was put forward just at the 
moment when such a plan was most required; when 
earnest searchers for two centuries had amassed so 
many plants of various forms, that they resembled a 
planless, heaped-up mass of materials in the temple of 
the Flower Goddess, for the disentangling of which no 
thoughtful and practicable plan had until then been 
laid down. Now when all this material threatened to 
overwhelm the Builder, the sexual system was pro¬ 
duced, by which plants could easily be examined and 
determined, thus forming an Ariadne thread in the 
labyrinth. Long after Linne’s death, those who 
proudly termed themselves “ true Linneans,” regarded 
that as his chief accomplishment, and trampled under¬ 
foot as heresy, each attempt to bring about another 
system. 
These people were more Linnean than Linne him¬ 
self. Soon he saw the weakness of his system and set 
himself to work upon another, in which plants would 
not be arranged according to a single or to a few 
organs; when in the same class were included forms 
widely different, but in which the nearer or more 
distant relationships of dissimilar forms should be the 
only determining principle. During the whole of his 
life he laboured to discover this, and recommended 
others to take part in the work. The relatively small 
number of discovered forms made this for him an 
impossibility. Linne was too honest to issue his con¬ 
clusions as complete, as he himself found them wanting, 
and therefore he pleased himself with merely creating 
natural families, leaving it to others to finish these and 
others into a systematic whole. From that time till 
our own days, botanists have been framing a natural 
system, without attaining their aim, or even finding a 
ground plan for the same. Concerning this, all are 
agreed that the contributions to it made by Linne are 
of uncommon yalue, and bear witness to his sharp¬ 
sightedness, sometimes showing the greatest power of 
