386 Dr. A. Biaiui on the Vegetable Individual. 



found and more i)iv<:;iiant conception of individuality, which will 

 no longer seem paradoxical when we perceive it is contirmed 

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

 development of the individual. Or are the ditferenccs of human 

 individuals in mental endowment and development less important 

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

 siological endowment and dcvelojiment of shoots ? Do wc not 

 meet with a similar reciprocal comi)letion, 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 organ ? 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; 

 80 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 accomplishment ?* 



* The preceding pages were almost all printed when I was fortunately 

 enabled to read Rcichert's memoir (Die monogene Fortpflanzung, Dorpat, 

 1852), uj)on a subject closely allied to the one here discussed. Ilis work 

 is full of new views of the subject, elaborated with great acuteness. The 

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

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

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

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

 of each other, or intimately connect(.^I by continuable bud-formation. 

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

 how be limited by, and distinguishable from (notwithstanding it is connected 

 with), others, it seems to n)e that even from this point of view Rcichert's 

 idea can by no means be carried out. I will not deny that there arc still 

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

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

 groimd of this phjcnomcnon in the fact, that the individual appears in its 

 full import in the higher ste])s of the series of created beings, while in 

 the lower it loses more and more its reality, if I may so say. I must 

 reserve farther remarks on this subject until I treat of the individuahty of 

 the lower plants. 



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

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

 argument so comjiletely and ably presented in the preceding pages, when 

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

 individuality. As yet, perha])s, no sure middle ground has been secured 

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

 offspring of a seed, however numerously mnltijilied, as philosophically the 

 individual ; while the other views the j)hyton, or in the simplest lower 

 plants, the cell, as philosophically rei)resenting the individual, — real indi- 

 vidualitv being incom])letely realized (and witii various grades of incom- 

 pleteness! in all vegetables, and in many animals. The mind is reluctant 

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

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

 we should inclnie to prefer the latter. — Asa Gray.] 



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