232 THE BIOCOSMOS PARTICULARIZED. 



has naturally many centers of Generation; 

 each part or organ in fact can reproduce the 

 whole individual. Hence rises the question 

 about the different values of these different 

 kinds of vegetal propagation. Even the sex- 

 ual process of the Plant is practically confined 

 to one individual, though there be dioecious 

 fertilization. Thus vegetal Generation never 

 quite frees itself from vegetal Assimilation, 

 both being largely in the same organism and 

 therein organically connected. To the com- 

 plete sexual diremption of Nature the Plant 

 never attains, though striving for it, and giv- 

 ing outer manifestations of it in the parts of 

 the flower. Vegetal Generation remains im- 

 plicit in the one individual, never getting fully 

 explicit in the two individuals (like the typical 

 animal). So the Plant as generative simply 

 returns upon itself, and makes itself another 

 like itself (or nearly so), for the offspring, 

 being thus limited to the one individual in 

 origin, must incline to be one-strained (not 

 two-strained, as the animal). But the various 

 kinds of propagation of Plants will differ just 

 in this regard, and Nature will help break 

 down the vegetal limit, as in the previously 

 mentioned case of Mutation. In a sense we 

 can say that the Animal is not so self-suffi- 

 cient as the Plant, since in its case, male and 

 female are not one individual; but just this 



