44 Artificial Systems and Terminology of Organs [BOOK i. 



soul consists in producing something like itself, and this like has 

 its origin in the food for maintaining the life of the individual, 

 or in the seed for continuing the species, perfect plants have at 

 most two parts, which are however of the highest necessity j 

 one part called the root by which they procure food ; the other 

 by which they bear the fruit, a kind of foetus for the continua- 

 tion of the species ; and this part is named the stem (' caulis ') 

 in smaller plants, the trunk (' caudex ') in trees.' 



This in the main correct conception of the upright stem as 

 the seed-bearer of the plant was also long maintained in 

 botany. We should observe also that the production of the 

 seed is spoken of as merely another kind of nutrition, a notion 

 which afterwards prevented Malpighi from correctly explaining 

 the flower and fruit, and in a modified form led Kaspar Fried- 

 rich Wolff in 1759 to a very wrong conception of the nature of 

 the sexual function. The next sentence in Cesalpino takes us 

 into the heart of the Aristotelian misinterpretation of the plant, 

 according to which the root answers to the mouth or stomach, 

 and must therefore be regarded in idea as the upper part 

 although it is the lower in position, and the plant would have 

 to be compared with an animal set on its head, and the upper 

 and lower parts determined accordingly : ' this part (the root) 

 is the nobler (' superior ') because it is prior in origin and sunk 

 in the ground ; for many plants live by the roots only after the 

 stem with the ripe seeds has disappeared ; the stem is of less 

 importance ('inferior') although it rises above the ground ; for 

 the excreta, if there are any, are given off by means of this 

 part ; it is, therefore, with plants as with animals as regards the 

 expressions ' pars superior ' and ' inferior.' When indeed we take 

 into consideration the mode of nourishment, we must define the 

 upper and the lower in another way ; since in plants and animals 

 the food mounts upward (for that which nourishes is light 

 because it is carried upwards by the heat), it was necessary to 

 place the roots below and to make the stem go straight upwards, 

 for in animals also the veins are rooted in the lower part of the 



