Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/387

 Rh our knowledge must be imperfect, and that our "genius" is certainly not "equal to the Majesty of Nature" Nevertheless Linnæus, and all true philosophical botanists since the first mention of the natural affinities of plants, have ever considered them as the most important and interesting branch, or rather the fundamental part, of systematical botany. Without them the science is truly a study of words, contributing nothing to enlarge, little worthy to exercise, a rational mind. Linnæus therefore suggests a scheme which he modestly calls Fragments of a Natural Method, which formed the subject of his occasional contemplation; but he daily and hourly studied the principles of natural affinities among plants, conscious that no true knowledge of their distinctions, any more than of their qualities, could be obtained without; of which important truth he was not only the earliest, but ever the most strenuous assertor.

In the mean while, however, Linnæus, well aware that a natural classification was scarcely ever to be completely discovered, and that if discovered it would probably be too difficult for common use, contrived an artificial