Dr. A. Braun on the Vegetable Individual, 255 



is dubious in our conception of vegetable individuality will be 

 explained. Successive development, we may say, is the peculiar 

 nature of plants, which, beyond the power exhibited in the pro- 

 cess of formation and propagation, possess no higher vital power ; 

 while in animals the process of the formation of the body ap- 

 pears only as an operation preparatory to its connexion with a 

 higher vital activity. For animals, in addition to their powers 

 of external manifestations, have a power of internal vital com- 

 prehension, which expresses itself in the life of the soul (by 

 which animals possess an internal centre, from which the organ- 

 ism is governed and regulated) . It is the soul alone which con- 

 nects in indivisible unity, and for reciprocal services, the pro- 

 ducts of the plastic power, and gives to the organism of animals 

 the character of a definite individuality. Among plants the case 

 is different : plants in their operations are active solely in one 

 direction, externally — are split up, so to say, in the process of 

 external conformation, so that the parts appear less connected, 

 as compared with the plant as a whole more independent, and 

 more divisible among themselves. Thus the vegetable organism 

 is ^ dividual, rather than an individual ; a multiplicity * rather 

 than a unity ; i, e. a whole whose parts hold the same relation 

 to each other as individuals to each other, but which present 

 spheres as indivisible as the whole itself. This is the doctrine of 

 the relative f individuality of plants, which Steinheil has espe- 

 cially noticed. According to this doctrine, different orders of 

 vegetable individuals, as it were different powers of individuality, 

 are distinguished. In the same manner DeCandolle { distin- 

 guishes the cell-individual [I'individu cellulaire, in which he 

 has been preceded by Turpin) ; the bud-individual {I'individu 

 bourgeonj after Darwin) ; the slip-individual {I'individu bouture) ; 

 the stock-individual, or the vegetable individual {Vindividu vege- 

 tal penes quem est jus et norma loquendi) ; and the embryo- 

 individual {Vindividu embryon), which, in accordance with the 



* " Planta est multitude." Engelmana, De Antholysi, p. 12. 



t Steinheil, I, c, especially p. 4 and p. 17 : "Les vegetaux ne peuvent 

 arriver a I'individualite absolue; ils se presentent a nous dans un etat, 

 qu'on pent designer par le nom d'individualite relative ; ce qui distingue 

 cette partie de la creation du regne mineral, ou I'individualite est nuUe, et 

 du regne animal, ou elle est presque toujours absolue." 



X DeCandolle, Physiologic Veget. p. 957. The author does not attach 

 much importance to his division, as he says he has assumed it for conve- 

 nience of expression, and to avoid the usual confusion of language. His 

 son Alphonse DeCandolle considers it quite an arbitrary matter which part 

 of the plant we call the individual : " Les vegetaux sont evidemment des 

 etres composes : mais jusqu'ou veut-on les decomposer, pour que les ele- 

 mens s'appellent des individus ? C'est une chose arbitraire, qui depend de 

 I'idee par laquelle on se laisse dominer " (after Steinheil, p. 6). 



