e must be read in its own light. And as the botanical
field became more luminous, the system of Jussieu and De Candolle slowly
emerged as a native growth, unfolded itself as naturally as the petals
of one of its own flowers, and forcing itself upon men's intelligence as
the very voice of Nature, banished the Linnaean system forever. It were
unjust to say that the present Theology is as artificial as the system
of Linnaeus; in many particulars it wants but a fresh expression to make
it in the most modern sense scientific. But if it has a basis in the
constitution and course of Nature, that basis has never been adequately
shown. It has depended on Authority rather than on Law; and a new basis
must be sought and found if it is to be presented to those with whom Law
alone is Authority.

It is not of course to be inferred that the scientific method will ever
abolish the radical distinctions of the Spiritual World. True science
proposes to itself no such general leveling in any department. Within
the unity of the whole there must always be room for the characteristic
differences of the parts, and those tendencies of thought at the present
time which ignore such distinctions, in their zeal for simplicity really
create confusion. As has been well said by Mr. Hutton: "Any attempt to
merge the distinctive characteristic of a higher science in a lower--of
chemical changes in mechanical--of physiological in chemical--above all,
of mental changes in physiological--is a neglect of the radical
assumption of all science, because it is an attempt to deduce
representations--or rather misrepresentations--of one kind of phenomena
from a conception of another kind which does not contain it, and must
have it implicitly and illicitly smuggled in before it can be extracted
out of it. Hence, instead of increasing our means of representing the
universe to ourselves without the detailed examination of particulars,
such a procedure leads to misconstructions of fact on the basis of an
imported theory, and generally ends in forcibly perverting the
least-known science to the type of the better known."[16]

What is wanted is simply a unity of conception, but not such a unity of
conception as should be founded on an absolute identity of phenomena.
This latter might indeed be a unity, but it would be a very tame one.
The perfection of unity is attained where there is infinite variety of
phenomena, infinite complexity of relation, but great simplicity of