REJUVENESCENCE IN NATURE. 109 



The Vegetable kingdom, like every kingdom of nature, 

 each of its divisions, each genus, and each species, has, in 

 virtue of its peculiar internal essence, its special desti- 

 nation. With this special purpose it enters into the 

 circle of the multifold life of nature, which meets it partly 

 as a friend, partly as a foe, partly favouring and bearing 

 it up towards its object, partly limiting and interrupting 

 the carrying out of it. Hence, every created thing 

 which, in realising itself, enters into the totality of natural 

 life, has to overcome the detracting influence of the lower 

 kingdoms, above which it has to elevate itself. The 

 vegetable kingdom is' preceded by the kingdom of the 

 shaped and shapeless elements, the kingdom of inorganic 

 nature. We behold in this, the kingdom of universal 

 combination in rest and motion, the kingdom of gravity 

 and cohesion, of universal mechanical antagonism ; in 

 detail the kingdom of the homogeneous and unchangeable, 

 in which every change of matter is at the same time a 

 destruction ; and, where it attains to shape, the kingdom 

 of fixed and motionless form. Throughout all this 

 region there is indeed a development of the whole through 

 detached shaping out of the individual parts, but the 

 individual parts have no progressive vital development, no 

 transformation as such, and no Self-rejuvenescence of 

 being. But above this kingdom of bondage the plant rises 

 in more emancipated development of life. It acquires shape, 

 not through a mere act of formation, but through a pro- 

 cess of development running through different periods, 

 in which it overcomes more and more inorganic nature 

 and its bondage, subordinates it as a means, bringing the 

 peculiar, more highly gifted nature, in it and through it, 

 to ever freer and more perfect unfolding. We see the 

 gradual solution of this problem realised in the metamor- 

 phoses of the plant. The elevation above the earthly, 

 merely passively physical, is expressed even in theascending 

 growth,* which is constantly combined with the progres- 



* Stems growing dowuwards or creeping liorizontally only occur in the 

 retrogressive or in persistent low stages of metamorphosis. 



