240 THE BIOCOSMOS PARTICULARIZED. 



are their antipathies. It seems that the whole 

 flower-world has the bent to separate the 

 sexes as far as possible externally by dis- 

 tance and internally (w.e may suppose) by 

 character. The stamen on a different tree 

 must be different from the stamen on the 

 same tree and in the same flower with its 

 pistil, though both trees belong to one spe- 

 cies. Heredity has had a far wider field for 

 its development in the first case. The flower 

 appears averse, like man to the marriage of 

 sister and brother, though both flower and 

 man have sometimes permitted it. 



It has been noticed that the very lowest 

 plants, some of the Algae and also the Bac- 

 terion, though propagated ordinarily by the 

 simplest fission, break out often into what 

 resembles the sexual organization, even if 

 this be of little or no use to the Plant. . But 

 thus it shows its impulse. We may call it a 

 longing for the completed sexual form of it- 

 self, which comes to realization only in the 

 higher plants, yea in the higher animals, for 

 the Plant never fully transcends its asexual 

 generative limitation. But in its striving for 

 such an end it leaves a long line of shapes 

 graduated by their approach toward the per- 

 fect flower, which is . always a generative 

 manifestation, ending in the seed. To be 

 sure, the perfect flower is still a problem; 



