PHILOSOPHY OF FLORICULTURE. 
171 
truth, or system of truths ; so that if there be twenty allegations 
concerning it, nineteen of them must be erroneous. This, by the 
way, is the grand cause of error in the theory, or, to express it 
more correctly, in the generalization of the facts and practice 
upon matters of all descriptions ; for in a book-producing and 
lecturing age like the present, the expounders of false doctrines 
exceed the propounders of true by a most overwhelming majority 5 
and what is more, and worse, most people, when they are seeking 
instruction, swallow falsehood with much more avidity, and retain 
it more pertinaciously, than they do true doctrine. The reason 
of this, though simple enough when once stated, is worthy of being 
mentioned. It is this :—a false system, being entirely the fabri¬ 
cation of its author, is made complete and consistent in all its 
parts, because the parties framing it have none of those difficulties 
to contend with which so frequently beset the path of him who is 
in search of truth. The whole truth upon any subject, and more 
especially on one so extensive, so complicated, and so very obscure 
as the physiology of vegetable life, is not known, and cannot pos¬ 
sibly be known to the most learned and laborious of the human 
race. Hence, whether the true theory of any subject be more or 
less extensive, it is never perfect ; on the contrary, it is a frag¬ 
ment : and, indeed, unless it is built up by such a man as we seldom 
meet with, it is a congeries of disjointed fragments ; so that he who 
seeks to cross the river from the land of ignorance to that of know¬ 
ledge finds only the piers of a bridge without the arches; and as 
there is no steam power by which this bourne can be passed, the 
student can do no more than gaze at the imperfect bridge, and re¬ 
main in ignorance. 
French savans—we dare not say philosophers—used to be, 
and many of them still are, great manufacturers of pretty but 
foundationless theories; and, like the spores of those fungi which 
ride upon the winds, they will sometimes stick to the head of a 
British philosopher, especially if it is a little soft. 
The allusion made to Dr. Lindley, in the number and page 
alluded to by “ Tyro,” has very much the air of being, originally, 
French ; although, from the very idiomatic nature of the French 
language, Dr. Lindley may not have rendered it in its original 
spirit. Still, even as rendered by him and by others in this 
country, variously translated and paraphrased, it reaches very 
nearly to that root of “ true no-meaning,” which renders the 
