Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/107

 was answered from the idea of it. This way of thinking is found everywhere in Linnaeus, not only where he is busy as systematist and describer, but where he wishes to give information on the nature of plants and the phenomena of their life, as in his 'Fundamenta,' his 'Philosophia Botanica,' and especially in his 'Amoenitates Academicae.' From among many instances we may select his mode of proving sexuality in plants. Linnaeus knew and lauded the services rendered to botany by Rudolph Jacob Camerarius, who as a genuine investigator of nature had demonstrated the sexuality of plants in the only possible way, namely, that of experiment. But Linnaeus cares little for this experimental proof; he just notices it in passing, and expends all his art on a genuine scholastic demonstration intended to prove the existence of sexuality as arising necessarily from the nature of the plant. He connects his demonstration with the dictum 'omne vivum ex ovo,' which Harvey had founded on an imperfect induction, and which he evidently takes for an a priori principle, and concludes from it that plants also must proceed from an 'ovum,' overlooking the fact that in 'omne vivum ex ovo' plants already form a half of the 'omne vivum'; then he continues, 'reason and experience teach us that plants proceed from an 'ovum,' and the cotyledons confirm it'; reason, experience, and cotyledons! Surely a remarkable assemblage of proofs. In the next sentence he confines himself at first to the cotyledons, which according to him spring in animals from the yolk of the egg, in which the life-point is found; consequently, he says, the seed-leaves of plants, which envelope the 'corculum,' are the same thing; but that the progeny is formed not simply from the 'ovum,' nor from the fertilising matter in the male organs, but from the two combined, is shown by animals, hybrids, reason, and anatomy. By reason in this and the previous sentence he understands the necessity, concluded from the nature, that is, the conception of the thing, that it must be so; animals supply him with the analogy, and anatomy can prove nothing, as long as it is not known what is