OF PLANTS. 81 



the knowledge of the solar system in these two. Neither 

 from the peculiar properties of matter, nor the laws of 

 motion, can we deduce the reason why fourteen planets 

 circulate round the sun, why only Earth, Jupiter, Saturn 

 and Uranus have satellites, why Saturn alone a ring, 

 why the planes of the planets' paths have this and no 

 other inclination toward each other, &c. In short, there 

 are still definite, permanent, created relations in space 

 which do not follow from the law of motion, which cannot 

 be considered as peculiarities of substance or of matter 

 in general, relations which are the cause of the form 

 under which the moving masses appear to us ; in a word, 

 the definite shape of this our solar system, which seems 

 accidental in so far that countless other shapes are possible, 

 and, perhaps, in other solar systems are actual. These last 

 considerations give us the study of fashioning, or Morpho- 

 logy. If we pass now from the solar system to the 

 circumstances of our own earth, Hylology becomes Che- 

 mistry ; Phoronomy, Physics, or, in reference to organized 

 bodies, Physiology ; and Morphology gives the characteristic 

 studies, Mineralogy, Zoology and Botany. 



The simplest plant we investigate, shows us, quite as well 

 as the solar system on a larger scale, a series of facts, which 

 may be distributed into the three primary divisions of 

 science. The plant, chemically analyzed, is found to be com- 

 posed of greater or smaller quantities of different substances, 

 the peculiarities of which, so far as we know at present, are 

 most intimately connected with the individuality of the 

 whole plant (Study of matter) . But by closer attention, we 

 soon find that these substances are never at rest ; that, on 

 the one hand, matters are entering the plant, on the other, 

 leaving it and, in the plant itself, in constant motion from 

 one place to another, constantly combining and separating 



