But before this evil had spread very widely, a new direction to the study of systematic botany and morphology was given in France, where the sexual system had never met with great acceptance. Bernard de Jussieu and his nephew, Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, taking up Linnaeus’ profounder and properly scientific efforts, made the working out of the natural system, in Linnaeus’ own opinion the highest aim of botany, the task of their lives. Here more was needed than a perpetual repetition of descriptions of single plants after a fixed pattern; more exact inquiries into the organisation of plants, and especially of the parts of the fructification, must supply the foundation of larger natural groups. It was a question therefore of new inductive investigation, of real physical science, of penetrating into the secrets of organic form, whereas the botanists who confined themselves to Linnaeus’ art of description made no new discoveries respecting the nature of plants. And if these men held to the dictum just quoted from Linnaeus, and therefore regarded themselves as his genuine disciples, the founders of the natural system had as good a right to the title, not because they followed his nomenclature and method of diagnosis, but because they strove after exactly that object which he had placed first in the science, the construction of the natural system; they were really the men whom he had meant when he spoke of ‘methodici’ and ‘systematici.’ The German, English, and Swedish collectors of plants adhered to the less profound, every-day, practical precepts of their master; the founders of the natural system followed the deeper traces of his knowledge. This direction proved to be the only one endowed with living power, the true possessor of the future.