OF PLANTS. 89 



affinities, and secondly, in the gradually completed discovery 

 and collection of the external circumstances, under the 

 influence of which the individual shapes are formed. For 

 the latter part of the subject, we have collected here and 

 there a few solitary fragments ; for the former half, the 

 arrangement of the forms of crystals is tolerably perfect ; 

 in plants and animal worlds, on the contrary, we have only 

 gained, from very various stand-points, a few prospects and 

 surveys, which, on the whole, exhibit but very little inward 

 connection. 



The great hindrance in the last case, in relation to certain 

 points, is exactly that phenomenon which we call vitality ; 

 wherein the characteristic of this life lies, is but rarely 

 distinctly to be perceived. 



The crystal does not spring at once a perfect Minerva 

 from the head of the Jupiter ; the matter of which it is 

 formed undergoes a constant series of changes, the final 

 result of which is the completed shape of the crystal. The 

 crystal, too, has an individual history, a biography, but 

 only a history of its becoming, its origination. Once 

 become, its life is at an end, its consistence excludes 

 every change ; the moment of its birth is that of the 

 expiration of its life, it is dead from the moment in which 

 it begins its perfect existence. Plants and animals form 

 the most direct contrast to this, and herein lies that 

 common nature, which induces us to comprehend them 

 in one conception, as organic or living existence. In the 

 following explanations, however, to avoid prolixity, I will 

 restrict myself to the Vegetable Kingdom. 



In Spring we commit the barley-corn to its nurse, the 

 earth ; the germ begins to move, starts from its envelopes, 

 which fall to decay. One leaf after another appears and 

 unfolds itself; then the flowers display themselves in a 



