Dr. A. Breiin on the Vegetable Individual. 



found and more pregnant conception of indiWduality, which will 

 no longer seem paradoxical when we perceive it is confirmed 

 even in the highest realms of life — in the sphere of the mental 

 development of the individual. Or are the diflferences of human 

 individuals in mental endowment and development less important 

 than those which we have seen in the morphological and phy- 

 siological endowment and development of shoots ? Do we not 

 meet with a similar reciprocal completion, a similar division of 

 labour among the individuals of the family, of the state, and of 

 nations, and cannot even the human individual become likewise 

 a mere ora:an ? Do we not see the development of the human 

 race itself bound up with a succession, in which the later gene- 

 rations continue the edifice their predecessors began, like branches 

 depending upon the earlier stocks and nourished by them ; — in 

 which generation is added to generation, and cycles to cycles; 

 so that thus, by the ever-renewed labour of the individual, the 

 problem of human life may be ceaselessly aspired to, and at last 

 reach its final accomphshment ?* 



* The preceding pages were almost all printed when I was {fHtmiately 

 enabled to read Reichert's memoir (Die mouogene Fortpflanzung, Dorpat, 

 1852), upon a subject closely allied to the one here discussed. His work 

 is fiill of new views of the subject, elaborated with g:reat acuteness. The 

 vegetable individual itself is considered in detaO, and the author is thus led 

 to a mode of viewing this subject similar to the Schulti-Schultzenstein-ian 

 doctrine of amaphfta — regarding not only the shoot, but even its single 

 parts, the intemotles, with their leaves, as series of individuals shooting out 

 of each other, or intimately connected by continuable bud-formation. 

 Since, however, it is implied in the idea of an individual, that it shall some- 

 bow be limited by, and distinguishable finom (notwithstanding it is connected 

 with), others, it seems to me that even fit)m this point of view Reichert's 

 idea can by no means be carried oat. I will not deny that there are stiU 

 other considerations in the nature of the shoot which it is difficult to re- 

 ocmcile with the idea of the simple individual, and I can only find the 

 groond of this phauiomenon in the &ct, that the individual appears in its 

 ndl impmt in the hi^iear atqps of the series <^ created bongs, while in 

 tiie lower it loses mcMre and more its reafitr, if I may so say. I most 

 reserve fiuther rejnarks on this »ibject until I treat oi the individuality of 

 the lower plants. 



[We cannot but think, after all, that this view of Reichert's, &c., which 

 our author rejects, is the legitimate conclusion, to which the very line of 

 argument so completely and ably presented in the preceding pa^es, when 

 fully carried out., naturally leads. It is merely a question of dieyne ci 

 individaahty. As yet, perhaps, no sure middle ground has been secured 

 between the two extreme views, — <Mie of which regards all the vegetative 

 offspring of a seed, however numerously midtiplied. as philosophi<»lly the 

 in di Vidnal; while the other views the ph}i^on. or in the simplest lower 

 plants, the cell, as philosonhicaUy re|Hesenting the individual, — real indi- 

 viduality being inemplet^ reafiaed (and with various grades of incom- 

 pleteness^ in all Tcsetables, and in many animals. The mind is reluctant 

 to accept either of these conclusions, and seeks — thus &r in vain — for some 

 staUe intermediate view. Of the two extreme views, if forced to the choice. 

 we Aoald incline to prefer the latter. — Asa Gray.] 



