a living Tragopanon, give similar flowers and seeds, i.e. 

 reproduce, because it acquires the properties of this 

 plant's organization and the same force. In other words 

 it could have been the same machine. "I think, however," 

 Wolff wrote, 



that even the strongest defenders of mechanical 

 medicine do not prescribe models of such function. 

 Consequently, the nourishing force of the plants and 

 animals should be distinguishable from the general 

 force of attraction, which is characteristic of all 

 the bodies of nature. This nourishing force should 

 be inherent only in the plant and animal substance, 

 because no other material except the plant and animal 

 feeds, grows and multiplies. Because the entire life 

 of the plants— -their nourishment, growth, vegetation 

 and multiplication — depends on the nourishing force, 

 it would be possible to call it inherent and an 

 essential force ... Since animals eat, grow and 

 vegetate (although the latter process extends not 

 too long after development) and reproduce — and 

 since their life depends on the nourishing force, 

 this force must be considered an essential force which 

 is characteristic of all vegetating bodies. ($ 72, 

 pp. 38 - 39) 



Further, Wolff stressed that for the vegetative life of 

 plants and animals their structure is not essential. As proof 

 he cited the boundless diversity of forms and the presence of 

 living creatures (lichens, sponges, moulds) which do not 

 have a defined external form and are devoid of structure 

 (composed of either vesicles or of granular masses) . "All 

 these living creatures simply could be accepted as living or 

 vegetative material, and it is too difficult to consider them 

 as organized bodies" ($ 73, p. 40). Another point in favor of 

 the independence of the organism's vegetative function from 

 its structure Wolff considered to be the decrease of the 

 regenerative property with the increase of organization." "It 

 is known," he wrote, "that the more perfect the regenerative 



6. The belief that the degree of the regenerative property is 

 in a strictly inverse relationship to the height of the 



(... contd on next page) 



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