180 Morphology under the Doctrine of [BOOKI. 



he says, at page 39, is whether we can speak of individuals in 

 plants at all, and this coincides with the other question, 

 whether the plant is a mere product of the activity of matter, 

 and so an unsubstantial appearance in the general circulation 

 of nature, the offspring of blind agencies, or whether it possesses 

 a peculiar and independent existence. The views of the phy- 

 siologists, who reject the vital force and explain the phenomena 

 of life by physical and chemical laws, have robbed life of its 

 mysterious and most directly operative principle, and pulled 

 down the strong wall of separation between organic and in- 

 organic nature. ' Because physical forces appear to be every- 

 where confined to matter and show in their operation a strict 

 subjection to law, men have ventured to regard the sum total of 

 natural phenomena as the result of original matter working in 

 conjunction with definite powers according to the laws of 

 blind necessity, as a natural mechanism moving in endless 

 circulation.' But he objects that the eternally necessary can 

 only be conceived of as accomplished from all eternity, and 

 thus this physical view would make all eventuality inconceiv- 

 able. Further, the purpose of the movement of nature must 

 remain an insoluble enigma in this scheme of blind necessity. 

 ' The inadequateness of the so-called physical view of nature as 

 compared with the teleological is therefore most felt in the 

 domain of organic nature, where special purpose in the 

 phenomena of life appears everywhere in greatest distinctness.' 

 The last remark is indisputable so long as we maintain either 

 the constancy of species or a merely internal law of develop- 

 ment ; the solution of the enigma was discovered a few years 

 later in Darwin's hypothesis, that all adaptations of organisms 

 are to be explained by the maintenance or suppression of 

 varieties, according as they are well or ill provided with the 

 means of sustaining the struggle for existence. No other 

 refutation or rather explanation of teleology in the science of 

 organic life has hitherto been attempted. It has been already 

 pointed out that systematic botany, by establishing the fact of 



