CHAP, ii.] from Cesalpino to Linnaeus. 45 



stomach, while their main trunk ascends to the heart and the 

 head.' Here, in genuine Aristotelian fashion, the facts are 

 forced into a previously constructed scheme. 



Cesalpino's discussion of the seat of the soul in plants is of 

 special interest in connection with certain views of later 

 botanists. ' Whether any one part in plants can be assigned 

 as the seat of the soul, such as the heart in animals, is a matter 

 for consideration for since the soul is the active principle 

 (' actus ') of the organic body, it can neither be ' tota in toto ' 

 nor ' tota in singulis partibus,' but entirely in some one and chief 

 part, from which life* is distributed to the other dependent 

 parts. If the function of the root is to draw food from the 

 earth, and of the stem to bear the seeds, and the two cannot 

 exchange functions, so that the root should bear seeds and the 

 shoot penetrate into the earth, there must either be two souls 

 different in kind and separate in place, the one residing in the 

 root, the other in the shoot, or there must be only one, which 

 supplies both with their peculiar capabilities. But that there 

 are not two souls of different kinds and in a different part in 

 each plant may be argued thus ; we often see a root cut off 

 from a plant send forth a shoot, and in like manner a branch 

 cut off send a root into the ground, as though there were a soul 

 indivisible in its kind present in both parts. But this would 

 seem to show that the whole soul is present in both parts, and 

 that it is wholly in the whole plant, if there were not this objec- 

 tion that, as we find in many cases, the capabilities are distri- 

 buted between the two parts in such a way that the shoot, 

 though buried in the ground, never sends out roots, for example 

 in Pinus and Abies, in which plants also the roots that are cut 

 off perish.' This, he thinks, proves that there is only one soul 

 residing in root and stem, but that it is not present in all the 

 parts ; in a further discussion he seeks to discover the true seat 

 of the soul. He points out an anatomical distinction between 

 the shoot and the root ; the root consists of the rind and an 

 inner substance which in some cases is hard and woody, in 



