470 ANALOGY BETWEEN A PLANT AND A FLAME. 



gions, some of which were present at the first moment of its existence, 

 and remain to its end, as, for example, the blue portion which is at its 

 under part. He might show how every one of these flames tends to as- 

 sume a definite or determinate form conical, for instance and proceed 

 to argue that this is the result of the interaction of external causes, as the 

 passage of currents in the air, and some interior principle or power pos- 

 sessed by the flame itself. He might consider how that from one flame 

 another can be kindled, in all respects like its parent in qualities or 

 shape ; and how, in succession, from one original, myriads upon myriads 

 might so arise. He might engage himself in disquisitions as to the man- 

 ner in which such an extraordinary result is to be explained, and as to 

 the source to which he should impute with exactness the origin of each 

 of these independent flames, and their mutual interrelation. He might 

 inquire if the force which each possesses was originally contained in the 

 original flame, and how it came to give it forth without loss of any of its 

 own power. He might also amuse himself with questions of individu- 

 ality, and, in doing all this, it would be no more than physiologists have 

 done before. Between the case of the trees and flames, of which we 

 have been speaking, it is not difficult to see that there is an analogy. 



Are plants, in truth, then, nothing more than temporary states through 

 Plants are o - w ^ cn material substance is passing, because of some original 

 erations, not physical impression made upon it, and the present operation 

 als ' of external circumstances ? Can individuality be applied to 

 them any more than to a flame ? Instead of being individuals, are they 

 not rather the transitory results of an operation? 



The lamp, which we have been using as an illustration, may serve to 

 Analo"- ' be enlighten our path a little farther. In the infancy of chemis- 

 tween a plant try, it might have been said of it that it possessed a burning 

 me ' power, which enabled it to dispose of the matter with which 

 it was fed, just as we say of a plant, in the infancy of physiology, that it 

 possesses a plastic power, which groups into definite forms the substance 

 with which it is furnished. The so-called burning power was derived 

 from another flame, in all respects analogous to that which manifests it, 

 and is nothing more than an extension of a physical operation, the tend- 

 ency of which, so far from being to check, is to continue as iong as the 

 proper material is furnished. The lighting of a second flame is essen- 

 tially the same condition as the continued combustion in the first. The 

 fact of separateness changes the phenomenon in no respect whatever ; the 

 relation of two separate flames is the same as that of two different parts 

 of the same flame ; and so the derivation of a plastic power by a plant 

 from its' ancestor is essentially the same thing as the manifestation of a 

 similar power in different parts of its own system. 



Though it may therefore be convenient to speak hypothetically of this 



