iTO HISTORY OF PHYSIOLOGY. 



But though \ve cannot but remark the peculiarity of our being 

 indebted to a poet for the discovery of a scientific principle, we must 

 not forget that he himself held, that in making this step, he had been 

 guided, not by his invention, but by observation. He repelled, with 

 extreme repugnance, the notion that he had substituted fancy for fact, 

 or imposed ideal laws on actual things. While he was earnestly pur- 

 suing his morphological speculations, he attempted to impress them 

 upon Schiller. " I expounded to him, in as lively a manner as possi- 

 ble, the metamorphosis of plants, drawing on paper, with many cha- 

 racteristic strokes, a symbolic plant before his eyes. He heard me," 

 Gothe says, 9 " with much interest and distinct comprehension ; but 

 when I had done, he shook his head, and said, ' That is not Expe- 

 rience ; that is an Idea :' I stopt with, some degree of irritation ; for 

 the point which separated us was marked most luminously by this 

 expression." And in the same work he relates his botanical studies 

 and his habit of observation, from which it is easily seen that no com- 

 mon amount of knowledge and notice of details, were involved in the 

 course of thought which led him to the principle of the Metamorphosis 

 of Plants. 



Before I state the history of this principle, I may be allowed to 

 endeavor to communicate to the reader, to whom this subject is new, 

 some conception of the principle itself. This will not be difficult, if he 

 will imagine to himself a flower, for instance, a common wild-rose, or 

 the blossom of an apple-tree, as consisting of a series of parts disposed 

 in whorls, placed one over another on an axis. The lowest whorl is 

 the calyx with its five sepals ; above this is the corolla with its five 

 petals ; above this are a multitude of stamens, which may be consi- 

 dered as separate whorls of five each, often repeated ; above these is a 

 whorl composed of the ovaries, or what become the seed-vessels in the 

 fruit, which are five united together in the apple, but indefinite in num- 

 ber and separate in the rose. Now the morphological view is this ; 



Thou, my love, art perplext with the endless seeming confusion 



Of the luxuriant wealth which in the garden is spread ; 

 Name upon name thou hearest, and in thy dissatisfied hearing, 



With a barbarian noise one drives another along. 

 All the forms resemble, yet none is the same as another ; 



Thus the whole of the throng points at a deep hidden law, 

 Points at a sacred riddle. Oh ! could I to thee, my beloved friend, 



Whisper the fortunate word by which the riddle is read ! 

 1 Zur Morphologic, p. '24. 



