METAPHYSICAL VAGAEIES 425 



A slightly condensed translation of Braun's 1 ' Rejuven- 

 escence of Plants ' appeared in 1854. 



To T. H. Huxley 



September 12, 1854. 



I have been groaning over ' Rejuvenescence ' que Diable ! 

 When is this German rubbish to end ? Do read the first 20 

 pages and tell me your candid opinion as a scientific man : 

 I confess to a want of poetic feeling or at least of that turn 

 of it that appreciates aesthetics in its modern application to 

 spiders and toadstools, or also (and really in this case to my 

 sorrow) of power to grasp metaphysical subjects, and what 

 some think high-class imagery too, and so I really would feel 

 it a personal favour if you would tell me whether I ought 

 to understand, or admire, or see any depth in, or at least see 

 nothing that should convince me that there was no depth in, 

 the first 20 pages of that blessed production, Braun's Re- 

 juvenescence. Mind you, I am a personal friend of Braun's 

 and like his real scientific work extremely, I cannot applaud it 

 too much, but there appears to me a wide difference between 

 exact studies upon the physiology and structure of crypto- 

 gamic plants, in which he excels, and upon the laws that 

 regulate the development of organs, in which he is also good 

 (though often fanciful), and these wild vagaries on the con- 

 nection of life, soul, porridge, mouse-traps, and the divine 

 essence. Braun's forte is mathematical precision and, like 

 many other men of like mind, he cannot (at least so I think) 

 distinguish between truth and nonsense when he takes up 

 speculative subjects ; after all perhaps I am fighting with a 

 shadow and I have a notion that after the 20th time of 

 reading Henfrey's execrable parody of the original, and after 

 [Black ?] (who is in Scotland) comes home, if I get him to en- 

 lighten me on the German, I shall find that Braun's mountain 

 will sink into a mole-hill and that I shall find he is only 

 clothing very old ideas in very cumbrous and far-fetched 

 garments. I am far from condemning the Ray Club for 



1 Alexander Braun (1805-77) was born at Regensburg and educated privately 

 till 1815, when he was sent to Carlsruhe. He contributed to botany while still 

 a schoolboy. After study at Heidelberg (1824); Munich (1827) and Paris, he 

 became Professor (1832) and Director of the Natural History Museum at 

 Carlsruhe and later at Berlin. He wrote many papers ; his most famous work 

 is Das Individuum der Pflanze, Species, Generations, <&c., 1853. 



