Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/125

 leaves of the third year the calyx, those of the fourth the corolla, those of the fifth the stamens, those of the sixth the pistil. Here we see once more how Linnaeus moves in the sphere of arbitrary assumptions with no thought of exact observation, for this whole theory of prolepsis rests on nothing that can be called a well-ascertained fact.

Yet a third time we find in Linnaeus the juxtaposition of a superficial view resting on every-day perception, and a more profound and to some extent a philosophical view; this is the case where he is concerned on the one hand with the dogma of the constancy of species, and on the other hand has to explain the fact of natural relationship and its gradations. Apart from some insignificant verbal explanations, Linnaeus adduced nothing in support of the dogma but the every-day perception of the unchangeableness of species, and to this he held fast to the end of his life; but it was important to find an explanation of the fact, to which he himself repeatedly drew attention, that genera, orders, and classes do not merely rest on opinion but indicate really existing affinities. His mode of solving the difficulty was a very remarkable one; not only does the scholastic manner of thought appear here again quite unalloyed by modern science, but he grounds his explanation once more on the old a priori notion that the pith is the vital principle in the plant, and also on his own assumption, that in the sexual act the woody substance of the anthers combines with the pith-substance of the pistil. Hugo Mohl has given a clear account of the matter in No. 46 of the 'Botanische Zeitung' for 1870, although neither he nor Wigand nor most of Linnaeus' biographers seem to know, that his theories are all to be traced to Cesalpino. Linnaeus' theory of natural affinities, as he gave it in 1762 in the 'Fundamentum Fructificationis,' and in 1764 in the sixth edition of the 'Genera Plantarum,' is as follows: At the creation of plants (in ipsa creatione) one species was made as the representative of each natural order, and these plants so corresponding to the natural orders were distinct from one