REJUVENESCENCE IN NATURE. 11 



tion of Nature, and its essential connection with 

 Mind, leads only to a chaos of unknown matters and 

 forces,* that is of matters and forces which are sealed 

 books to the mind, or more properly of unknown causes 

 which co-operate in a manner to us inexplicable. From 

 this dark chaos no bright path leads up to the mind; 

 nay, it is inconsequent to regard the mind from this 

 point of view as anything but an inessential result of the 

 co-operation of unknown causes. The study of develop- 

 ment is pre-eminently calculated to defend us from such 

 a miserable spoliation of Science, for the connection of 

 the perceived phenomena of Being must necessarily lead 

 us to the recognition of the Becoming, as an internal 

 essence (specifically) the same through all changes. 



The comprehension of the individual phenomenon as a 

 member of a series of essential correlative representations, 

 requires not merely the carrying back of the research to 

 the earliest rudiment, from which alone the succeeding 

 transformations can obtain their correct interpretation, 

 but also a continuation of the observation up to the term 

 of the development, whereby is first perceived, on the 

 other hand, the true destination of the efforts in the 

 formative processes. This is equally true of individual 

 organs, whose physiological destination is first distinctly 

 realised when the formation is complete, and of the indi- 

 vidual whole, whose specific and generic character is 

 chiefly expressed in the last stage of the metamorphosis, 

 — for example, in the flower and fruit of the Plant. This 

 is true, moreover, of the more comprehensive develop- 

 mental series in Nature. The character of every genus, 

 family, class, &c., should grasp its type, as it were its 

 ideal object, for which purpose the lower members of the 



* The sadness of such an essence-less view of nature, which of course must 

 strive to eradicate from the ideas and language of science, all which from its 

 ovm standing point appears anthropomorphic, does not strike us in its 

 fulness, simply from the fact that the desired eradication cannot be so readily- 

 carried out, on account of the intimate and immemorial blending of the 

 more profound ideas with human language. See Schleiden, ' Die Pflanze 

 und ihr Lebcn,' 15. 'The Plant,' translated by A. Henfrey. 



