Philosophy of Botany. 265 



eratio equivoca or spontanea " by the older authors ; by the 

 moderns, " archegonia." 



The term " archegony " comprises, in a strictly scientific 

 sense, two essentially different processes, " autogony " 'and 

 '■ plasmogony." Under the term " autogony " we conceive the 

 origin of tlie most simple plasma body in an inorganic fluid — 

 i. e., in such a fluid in which those elements which are needed 

 for the composition of the organic body are contained in 

 simple and constant solutions; for instance, carbonic acid, 

 hydrate of ammonia, binary salts. Contrariwise, the process 

 would be called " plasmogony," if the organic individual takes 

 its rise in an organic vegetative fluid — i. e., in a fluid which 

 contains these essential elements in form of complicated and 

 unstable carbon compounds, in solution (albumen, carbon- 

 hydrates, etc.). 



The processes of autogony as well as of plasmogony have, as 

 yet, not been demonstrated. Attempts at the solution of the 

 problem of archegony in earlier as well as recent times nearly 

 all refer not to autogony, but to plasmogony, which latter 

 process is of little avail in reference to primordial organic orig- 

 ination. The temporary failure to verify, by experiment the 

 possibility of autogony cannot have more than a negative bear- 

 ing, and does not absolutely prove that under no circumstance's 

 such an event ever could have occurred. 



The ripened judgment of contemporaneous investigators 

 tends to make it clear that the impossibility as well as the pos- 

 sibility, can never be brought to a tangible demonstration in 

 its ultimate inchoative state. More about this hereafter. 



Hypotheses about a natural spontaneous generation were 

 advanced already in the seventh century before our era by the 

 leaders of the Ionian school, the three Milesians Thales, 

 Anaximenes, and Anaximander. The latter especially asserted 

 important fundamental tenets of our modern monism. They 

 pointed out that a natural uniform law is the source of the 

 manifold manifestations, recognized the unity of the whole 

 nature, and the constant transmutations of forms. Anaximan- 

 der allows that the living creatures have originated in the 

 water, under the influence of solar heat, and that man has de- 

 veloped out of fishlike creatures. Later on we read in the 



