A well constructed synthesis must necessarily precede every theory of nature. Descartes, when working out his system of whirlwinds, formulated a conception which was certainly very inexact; but the facts upon which this theory rested were so well selected, they responded so exactly to the requirements of science, that when Newton came, with his system of attraction, it only remained to apply the new hypothesis to the facts collected by Descartes for his whirlwinds, and there was real astronomy, the true physics. When Linnæus created his system of botany, he made an undeniably artificial distribution of the vegetables, and Linnæus himself perfectly understood the defects of his system. But, owing to this artificial method, he succeeded in grouping all the plants into a methodical catalogue. If the principle of classification was bad, the service rendered to botany by this catalogue was immense. It was not, in fact, until after Linnæus' time that the immense mass of facts which he collected could be put in order, and the study of the vegetable world made to progress from those data. Botany dates from the publication of the systema naturæ of the immortal botanist of Upsal.
We do not pretend to put forward an irreproachable theory of the universe in this work, but simply to collect together and methodically group the facts upon which such a theory ought to rest, facts physical, metaphysical, and moral.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] "La Pluralité des existences de l'âme," Paris, p. 450.
[19] "La Religion des Hindous selon les Védas," par Lanjuinais, Paris, p. 286.
[20] "La Religion des Hindous selon les Védas," pp. 324, 325.
[21] "Histoires," Vol. II. ch. cxxiii. (translated by M. Larcher.)
