CHAP, iv.] Metamorphosis and of the Spiral Theory. 173 



subjects, facts are regarded from the point of view of his 

 philosophy. He has given a general view of his philosophical 

 principles and illustrated them by a vast variety of facts in his 

 famous book, ' Betrachtungen iiber die Erscheinung der 

 Verjiingung in der Natur, insbesondere in der Lebens- und 

 Bildungsgeschichte der Pflanze ' (1849-50). He himself directs 

 attention to the opposition between his own stand-point and 

 the modern induction in the tenth page of the preface, where 

 he replies to the obvious objection, that his ideas may be 

 regarded as antiquated, in the words, ' A more living contem- 

 plation of nature, such as is here attempted, which seeks in 

 natural bodies not merely the operation of dead forces, but the 

 expression of a living fact, does not lead, as is supposed, to 

 airy structures of fancy, for it does not pretend to gain a 

 knowledge of life in nature in any other way than as it is 

 revealed in phenomena,' etc. This thought is still more 

 distinctly uttered in page 13 of the text; 'As external nature 

 without mankind presents to us only the spectacle of a laby- 

 rinth without a guide, so too scientific contemplation, which 

 denies the inner spiritual principle in nature and the intimate 

 connection of nature with the informing spirit 1 , leads to a chaos 

 of substances and forces, which are unknown because divorced 

 from spirit, or, to speak more precisely, to a chaos of nothing 

 but unknown causes, which work together in an inexplicable 

 manner.' In a note to this passage he points expressly to ' the 

 comfortless character of such an unreal mode of viewing nature, 

 which must necessarily endeavour to root out everything in the 

 conceptions and language of science which appears from its 

 own point of view to be anthropopathic,' and he requires a 

 tender, ethical element as essential to botanical investiga- 

 tion. The chief object of the volume is to prove that every- 

 thing in organic life may be resolved into rejuvenescence, of 



1 This is not at all true of modem inductive science, which merely forms 

 a different idea of the connection, and has regard to the relation between the 

 percipient subject and the phenomena. 



