2 THE LIFE OF THE PLANT 



if it is indeed working out any ideas at all ? If the 

 public seems ignorant on these points, the fault lies 

 partly with botanists themselves, and partly with the 

 historical development of science. Let us consider 

 these conditions. 



Living organic Nature meets us under a twofold guise. 

 We find her in bodily forms, i.e. in plants and animals, 

 and we observe her in phenomena, i.e. in life itself. 

 We call living beings organisms, because they are made 

 up of organs or instruments. Every organ, every 

 instrument has a certain function peculiar to itself, and 

 bears at the same time a certain relation to the general 

 life of the whole organism. It is impossible to study 

 organs apart from their function, or organisms detached 

 from their life — almost as impossible as to study a piece 

 of mechanism and its parts without regard to their 

 function. Who would have the patience to study the 

 description of the parts of a mechanism, say of a clock, 

 without any explanation of their function ? Such a 

 study would be not only tedious but fruitless. Likewise 

 it is obviously impossible to become acquainted with 

 the working of a machine without knowing its con- 

 struction. It follows that the independent study of 

 an organism from the two arbitrary points of view 

 mentioned above, i.e. in relation to its form and its 

 functions, is artificial and even illogical. These artificial 

 points of view, however, and a corresponding division 

 of the subject, long ago became established in science. 

 Biology, the science of living beings, was split into 

 two branches : (i) the study of forms, called anatomy 

 or, more generally, morphology, and (2) the study of 

 phenomena; of Hfe, called physiology. This division 

 was caused partly by the necessity for applying the 

 principle of the division of labour to the manipula- 

 tion of such large numbers of accumulated facts, partly 

 by differences in the methods of investigation, and also 

 partly by difference of aim in the two branches of this 



