242 THE BIOC08MOS PARTICULARIZED. 



But from such speculative outlooks, which 

 have their rights, we may turn to the actual 

 Plant-world as it unrolls before us, or rather 

 mounts from the humblest form to the high- 

 est. 



3. Total Generation of Plant-life. Evolu- 

 tion has left its emphatic impress on Botany 

 as on the other sciences. One result is that 

 the entire Plant-world is graded upward on 

 an evolutionary line which has a bottom, but 

 seemingly no top. The foot of the ladder in- 

 deed rests upon or rather pushes down into 

 the primordial life-stuff (Protobioticon) 

 which, though hypothetical, is the necessary 

 pre-requisite and creative source of all suc- 

 ceeding Life, vegetal and animal. For it is 

 the germinal fountain-head of living individ- 

 uation, the original home of all vital forms, 

 even of the smallest cell, which comes forth 

 already organized from this elemental plastic 

 reservoir of living things. Here lies the 

 transition from the Inorganic to the Organic, 

 into which the whole science of biological evo- 

 lution plunges backward, as its indispensable 

 postulate, even if speculative. Only Psyche 

 can say anything about it as yet, though 

 Physis is also there and will in time get to 

 talking about itself, voiced of course by the 

 scientist. 



This same elemental life-stuff is the arena 



