322 



THE PHENOMENON OF 



interlinking (Gliederung), only in a free condition, and the 

 species as a whole, developing itself in this formation of 

 links, as it were a vegetable " stock" of a higher kind. 



That we might go still further in this direction, in the 

 attempt to seize the conception of the natural continuity 

 of the essence, we have already indicated in the Intro- 

 duction. For as the individual appears as a link of the 

 species, so does the species as a link of the genus, the 

 genus as a link of the family, of the order, the class, 

 of the kingdom ; the kingdoms of Nature even as the 

 great principal links of the organism of Nature ; a view 

 with which, indeed, we give to the Natural System its true 

 and objective import, which is entirely lost in the mere 

 subjective abstract conception of the natural divisions.^i^ 



* The true recoguition of the organism of Nature and its composition of 

 members or links, as objective facts, expressed by Nature itself, is essen- 

 tially necessary to the higher shaping of Natural History as a unity. The 

 tendency existing in the contrary direction, disregarding one-sided philo- 

 sophic hypotheses, is caused among botanists chiefly by the previously pre- 

 vailing cultivation of the Artificial system, and the dilficulty of the con- 

 struction of the truly Natural. Linnaeus himself, moreover, the founder of 

 the most important Artificial system in botany, regarded species and genera, 

 emphatically, as objective works of Nature, ('Phil. Bot.,' § 162,) and 

 explained the classes and orders of the Artificial system as a makeshift, until 

 the Natural were detected, (§ 161.) It is remarkable to find even such 

 authors as are inclined to an objective view of the conceptions of the 

 genus and species, making the assertion that merely the individual really 

 exists, (thus e. g. in Spring, ' Ueber die Naturhist. Begriffe von Gattung, 

 Art und Abart," 1838, p. 22, 23.) To acknowledge the individual as really 

 existing, and deny the natural actuality of the more comprehensive com- 

 plexes of the organism of nature, is an inconsequence, depending on the 

 deception by which the individual seems to be immediately given in the 

 phenomenon, while it is easy to see that the individual, as such, i. e., as a 

 single being, can only be conceived mediately, in the recognition of the inner 

 unity which runs through the series of phenomena, in which it displays 

 itself. Child, youth, and man, caterpillar, chrysalis, and buiterfly, are not 

 to be conceived from external appearance, but only in consequence of their 

 immaterial essence, as one and the same single being. The external con- 

 tinuity of the successive series of appearances of the individual, affords no 

 ground for regarding it essentially differently from the comprehensive sys- 

 tematic complexes, for the same recurs even in the successive appearances of 

 the species, where successive links (the individuals) stand in direct con- 

 nection in the reproduction. That the individual has no right to be 

 considered as real in other senses than the species, genus, &c., is indicated 

 especially in the alternation of generations, as it is called, which exhibits the 

 remarkable case of the individual, in the higher sense, (the bioloo-ical 

 individual,) breaking up into a limited or unlimited series of subordinate 



