310 The Vegetable Individual, in its relation to Species. 
dividual, a being perfectly simple and indivisible, this is our last 
refuge, in which we may indeed reach an individual, but not a 
vegetable individual ; for this would then be identical with the 
material individual common to all corporeal existence. But, even 
if we could give up all hopgg of a specific vegetable individual, 
doubt would still linger round these physical individuals ; for even 
the existence of the universal primary particles of bodies,—the 
material individuals, the atoms,—is not conclusively established. 
No eye has seen them; we do not even think of considering them 
as objects of direct perception; we only accept them as an hy- 
pothesis, to eke out our theories of motion and of chemical affinity, 
and to enable us to compute their relations. The question might 
easily be asked, whether the same phenomena may not be as well 
explained by assuming the continuity, expansibility and penetra- 
bility of matter. However this may be, the question concerning 
the existence of atoms certainly lies beyond the limits of botan- 
ical investigation; and if the existence of vegetable individuals 
on this question, the botanist must despair of proving it. 
Thus the question at which we have now arrived is this: can we 
speak of individuals in botany? and this is identical with an- 
other: are plants mere products of the operations of matter (i. €., 
of a substance self-moving, uniting and separating by an innate 
force), and hence non-entities, or mere phenomena resulting from, 
or produced by, the blind forces of nature ; or may we ascribe 
to plants an independent existence in nature, notwithstanding 
their connection with the external world ? 
what we call plants are nothing but complex chemical and 
physical processes, then we can no longer speak of their individ- 
uals and species in the sense the words usually bear ; for the 
mere phenomena of the operations of the primary substance, 
which have no other efficient principle than the forces of this 
substance, cannot be regarded as self-existent beings, or aS Pe- 
culiar (specific) kinds of these beings, or as single (individual) 
modifications of them. This is, in fact, the result towards which 
the later physiological investigations are hastening, grounded on 
the positive results of investigations in the physical sciences. 
Even vegetable physiology cannot resist this tendency of science, 
although it struggles more or less against these conclusions.* The 
operations by which plants, and all organic beings, form and pre- 
serve their organisms, were formerly ascribed peculiar vital 
forces; but the physiology of our day would recognize in the vital 
unctions of the organism the same forces by which the processes 
of inorganic nature are perfomed. Thus physiology becomes 
_* Even Schleiden, the most prominent and most decided of the representatives 
tendency, seeks to counterbalance the deadening effects of the purely ag 
| i ihr Leben; last lecture: d. Es 
of this ; > 
rialistic view by an esthetic one (Die Pflanze und 
COMA | 
ae be, 
