SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 189 

 testines, skin, and flesh — the mammals. Further quotations vvould be super 

 fluous. We find in the above a great deal of ancient mysticism, such as the 

 mysticism of numbers — recurring groups of three and four — the comparing 

 of the animal kingdom to a great body, reminiscent of Swedenborg's specula- 

 tions, and, finally, the strange idea of figures at the beginning of his work. At 

 the same time we find here some occasional idea that recalls biological theo- 

 ries of our own day, as, for instance, the follicle-shaped primal animal, the 

 idea of the sea as the origin of animal life. Oken was undoubtedly a man of 

 ideas, many of which might be of value to the future; his unbridled imagi- 

 nation, however, made him a warning to the succeeding generation and an ill- 

 directed example of what the results of natural -philosophical speculation 

 may be. 



Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck (1776-185 8) forms a 

 parallel to Oken in the sphere of botany. From the south of Germany, like 

 Oken, he was the son of a public official; he studied medicine at Jena, where 

 he was won over to Schelling's philosophy and came into contact with 

 Goethe. Having completed his studies, he settled down on an estate that he 

 had inherited and there worked as a private scholar until the year 1818, when 

 he was appointed professor of botany at the newly-founded University of 

 Bonn. He established the botanical institute and gardens there and wrote a 

 number of books on both botany and natural philosophy. Later, having 

 been appointed professor at Breslau, he began by doing some successful work. 

 In old age, however, the romantic natural philosopher became ultra-radical; 

 he took part in the labour movement, zealously supported ideas for the re- 

 form of Christianity, and worked hard in theory and practice for free mar- 

 riage without State co-operation; the end of which was chicanery, dismissal, 

 and death in poverty. The Labour Union at Breslau, whose chairman he was, 

 followed him to the grave. 



As a classifier of plants, Nees von Esenbeck has acquired a distinguished 

 name; he has won special fame for his tropical floras, dealing with the phan- 

 erogamous plants of the Cape and of Brazil; his works on the cryptogams, 

 on lichens and hepaticas, alga; and fungi were also at one time highly thought 

 of. He himself, however, set greater store by his natural-philosophical spec- 

 ulations. In his Lehrbuch der Bofanik, which he dedicated to Goethe, he carried 

 the latter's metamorphosis theory to the uttermost extreme. To him the 

 leaf is a kind of symbol for the plant as a whole; the entire vegetable world 

 is to him one mighty leaf, just as the animal world was to Oken one mighty 

 animal. Even in the vegetable world the number three plays an important 

 and mystical role and is the basis for a good deal of play upon words. Polarity 

 in the style of Schelling recurs once more; the fungi represent the north and 

 the plants the south, the animals midnight and man noon, while the chemi- 

 cal components of plants are dealt with just as arbitrarily. The colours in 



