ea ee 
BSSigsralte nowpeticrapenao 
The Vegetable Individual, in its relation to Species. 311 
physics and chemistry, or, according to the usual conception of 
the physical and chemical processes themselves, the “ mechan- 
ics” of organic nature in the most comprehensive meaning of the 
term mechanics. And thus the life of the enchanter is un- 
veiled, who had seemed to be the immediate cause of his own 
works; the lofty partition-wall between organic and inorganic 
nature falls, aud one common foundation is laid for investiga- 
ting all material processes in every realm of nature. This impor- 
tant result is reached: the existence of the higher orders of nat- 
ural phenomena, which had been regarded as the peculiar realm 
of Life, is referred to the same natural causes (the same mate- 
tial substance and the same kind of forces) by which the lower 
orders, those of “inanimate” nature, have their being and per- 
form their functions. Still further conclusions may be attempted, 
and it is in the nature of scientific progress that these attempts 
should be made. As physical forces seem to be everywhere 
indissolubly connected with matter, and as a fixed regularity dis- 
plays itself in their operations, men were found bold enough to 
consider the totality of natural phenomena as the result of orig- 
inal primary substances, codperating with determinate forces, 
according to the laws of a blind necessity ;—a natural mechan- 
ism revolving in its endless orbit.* 
Though this view seems to explain all the phenomena of na- 
ture from one principle, in fact it precludes any real explana- 
If the “ mechanical” (physical and chemical) forces of nature are 
hecessarily active, then if any motion is to take place, the first im- 
pulse, the proximate cause, cannot be explained by the nature of 
the motion ; it must be another principle above necessity ; and this 
1s true not only of nature as a whole, but also of every particu- 
lar motion in nature as well. Thus not only the first impulse, but 
the universally apparent final cause, remains an inexplicable rid- 
dle in the doctrine of blind necessity. Hence the insufficiency 
of the « physical” theory, compared with the “teleological’’y is 
Peculiarly obvious in the realms of organic nature, where 
i these views are developed, e. g.: in both of 
nF ‘Phyuok, des Sotyecdaals in nzen u. Thieren, (1851), 
ns (1852); in the last mentioned work we find sen- 
miracle of nature is the interchange of 
interchanges 
of attrahent and Sk gente belongs, after 
‘ar ee y, ber dic Uebercinstimmung in 
der Structur m d. Thiere u. Pflanzen, (1839), especially p. 221-225 ; 
onthe other side, Zschricht d. Physische Leben, (1852), in sections ii and iii. 
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