Philosophy of Botany. 2 7 7 



promise of the manufacture of living matter by artificial means. 

 Yet none of these numerous laboratory products has reached 

 the quality of protoplasm — a substance endowed with the self- 

 evolving power of continuous change. 



All the artificially produced proteids are definite and homo- 

 geneous chemical compounds, without that fundamental 

 organic characteristic of a definite external limitation. 



Bacteria and moners are without recognizable internal 

 structure, but greatly specialized in size and shape. Even 

 they show functions of psychical force, be it only the selection 

 of food. 



From these lowest forms onward we observe with increas- 

 ing clearness the organic progress — irritability and growing 

 diversity of structure, sexuality, sensibility, more and more 

 specialization in digestive, reproductive, and nervous Systems, 

 and ultimately the intellectual or psychical faculties. 



The continuity, of evolution represented in the succession 

 of species is rerepresented in the genesis of individual lives by 

 embryonic development, when during fetal life the ances- 

 tral stages are gradually passed through, a process proving 

 the validity of the laws of inheritance and adaptation — on- 

 togeny. 



At this point we are brought in contact with the highest 

 problems not only of. biology, but also of philosophy, the 

 psychical question. 



The individual existence qf organisms takes its beginning 

 in the moment of fertilization of the ovum, through the micro- 

 scopically small spermatic cell. .,An important discovery 

 made recently by Pfefter demonstrated that the mutual attrac- 

 tion between the spermatozoa and ovum is effected by chem- 

 ical affinity. No other act in organic life demonstrates more 

 convincingly the importance and efficiency of matter, when we 

 contemplate how the physical and intellectual development 

 not only of the newly generated being, but also of his de- 

 scendants, for indefinite time is thereby predetermined. The 

 minuteness and simplicity of 'the external structure of this 

 cell demand an indeterminable complicity of its molecular 

 composition. 



Indications of a psychical energy are noticeable at a very low 



