Chap, iv.] Metamorphosis and of the Spiral Theory. 161 



ness. Even the best German botanists of the time, such as 

 Ludolph Treviranus, Link, G. W. Bischoff, and others, managed 

 to escape the influence of this philosophy of nature, only where 

 they confined themselves to the most barren empiricism. 

 Strange phenomenon ! that as soon as gifted and understand- 

 ing men began to talk of the metamorphosis of plants, they 

 fell into senseless phrase-mongering; Ernst Meyer, for instance, 

 was it is true no great botanist, but he shows in his 'Geschichte 

 der Botanik' that he possessed a clever and cultivated intellect. 

 The painful impression, which the treatment of the doctrine of 

 metamorphosis by these writers makes upon us, is due partly 

 to the fact that the deeper meaning of the idealistic philosophy 

 never attained to logical expression in their hands, and still 

 more to their indulgence in an unmeaning play of phrases, 

 combining the highest abstractions with the most negligent 

 and rudest empiricism, and sometimes with utterly incorrect 

 observations. Oken can claim the merit of more correct 

 observation and greater philosophical consistency, and if we 

 reject his views, yet his mode of presenting them has at least 

 the pleasing appearance of more consequential reasoning. We 

 perceive for the first time the full greatness of the debt which 

 modern botany owes to men like Pyrame de Candolle, Robert 

 Brown, von Mohl, Schleiden, Nageli, and Unger, the latter of 

 whom only slowly worked his way out of the trammels of the 

 nature-philosophy, when we compare the literature of the 

 doctrine of metamorphosis before the year 1840 with the 

 present condition of our science, for which they paved the way. 

 In spite of the real and apparent differences between 

 Goethe's doctrine of metamorphosis and De Candolle's doc- 

 trine of a plan of symmetry, these writers agreed in this, that 

 they set out alike from the doctrine of the constancy of 

 species, and led up equally to the result, that alongside of 



adherence to such notions prevented an unbiassed interpretation of what he 

 saw. See ; Flora,' 1845, p. 439. 



M 



