CHAP, ii.] from Ccsalpino to Linnaeus. 47 



neck (collet) ; and though the Linnaean botanists of the igth 

 century were unaware of what Cesalpino had proved in the 

 1 6th, and did not even believe in a soul of plants, they still 

 entertained a superstitious respect for this part of the plant, 

 which is really no part at all ; and this, it would seem, explains 

 the fact, that an importance scarcely intelligible without reference 

 to history was once attributed to it, especially by some French 

 botanists. To return once more to Cesalpino's ' cor,' he is not 

 much troubled by the circumstance that plants can be repro- 

 duced from severed portions ; in true Aristotelian manner he 

 says that although the principle of life is actually only one, yet 

 potentially it is manifold. Ultimately a ' cor ' is found in the 

 axil of every leaf, by which the axillary shoot is united with 

 the pith of the mother-shoot, and finally, in direct contradiction 

 to the previous proof that the crown of the root is the seat of 

 the plant-soul, it is distinctly affirmed in Chapter V that the 

 soul of plants is in some sense diffused through all their 

 parts. 



The theoretical introduction to his excellent and copious 

 remarks on the parts of fructification may supply another 

 example of Cesalpino's peripatetic method : 'As the final cause 

 (' finis ') of plants consists in that propagation which is effected 

 by the seed, while propagation from a shoot is of a more imper- 

 fect nature, in so far as plants do exist in a divided state, so the 

 beauty of plants is best shown in the production of seed ; for 

 in the number of the parts, and the forms and varieties of the 

 seed-vessels, the fructification shows a much greater amount of 

 adornment than the unfolding of a shoot ; this wonderful beauty 

 proves the delight (' delitias ') of generating nature in the bring- 

 ing forth of seeds. Consequently as in animals the seed is an 

 excretion of the most highly refined food-substance in the heart, 

 by the vital warmth and spirit of which it is made fruitful, so 

 also in plants it is necessary that the substance of the seeds 

 should be secreted from the part in which the principle of the 

 natural heat lies, and this part is the pith. For this reason, 



