THE CELL-STATE. j 77 



perform its functions when separated from the whole. No part, not 

 the smallest, can be separated from the body without the whole suf- 

 fering. 



It is very different with the plant. A tree indeed appears to be a 

 single being, sinking the net-work of its roots into the ground, raising 

 its slender trunk into the air and spreading out above the web of its 

 limbs and boughs. The members of which the tree consists may be 

 regarded as its organs. It sucks up its nourishment through its roots, 

 it breathes through its leaves, it propagates its species through its 

 flowers. But the connection of these members with each other is of 

 an infinitely looser character than that of the organs of the animal. I 

 can strip as many leaves as I please from a willow, the rest lives on ; 

 I can cut off its limbs, those that are left grow more vigorously ; I can 

 cut it down near the roots, new shoots spring up from the stump ; I 

 set the rootless stem in moist earth, and it continues to live. If I wish 

 to make a layer, I have only to plant the end of a bough, and it takes 

 root and grows. In many plants a single leaf has the capacity of living 

 and growing. The plant is not therefore indivisible, like the animal ; 

 its individual members are in a much higher measure independent and 

 competent to live. "We may say the animal is a single being, each of 

 its members is only a part, not itself a whole, only an organ, not itself 

 an individual. The plant, on the other hand, is a composite being, a 

 chain of individuals, each of which possesses an independent life, but 

 all of which are connected in a collective life of a higher order ; the 

 plant is an organism the organs of which are themselves organisms. 



This relation may be made clear by a suitable figure. A state is, 

 without doubt, in many respects a single organism, which maintains 

 an independent, often sharply denned, unchanged character through 

 centuries, and marks its domain as an indivisible, also as a real indi- 

 vidual. Each state has its own development-history : it is founded, it 

 grows, reaches its prime, and decays ; it has its life-economy, for the 

 functions of which it maintains its particular organs, its officers. The 

 state also acts in external affairs as a single organism ; it makes war, 

 it establishes enterprises for the general benefit, it builds important 

 works, etc. But if the state thus appears as a single whole, so also it 

 may be regarded on the other side as a collection of provinces ; each 

 province is a state in miniature, likewise organized in itself ; and his- 

 tory furnishes us with numerous examples in which single provinces 

 have been able to cut loose from the collective state and maintain 

 themselves as independent state-organisms. The province, again, can 

 be regarded as an association of villages which represent the smallest 

 social organizations ; every village is also a state in miniature, with 

 independent economy, and capable of maintaining itself independently 

 in case of necessity, and, in fact, of growing up, as Rome, Carthage, 

 and Venice have shown, into mighty states. If we carry our simili- 

 tude to the end, we may liken the animal to a compact, centralized, 



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