190 
He gives us in this a well-written account of fermentation, 
and of the modus operandi of the yeast plant, to which I have 
nothing to object, till he gets to the description of the yeast 
plant as a mere sac or cell, and follows Schwann in his asser- 
tion that “ fermentation is the most fully and exactly known 
operation of cells, and represents, in the simplest fashion , the 
process vjhich is repeated hy every cell of the living body.” 
Those who like the analogy may take it for what it is worth, 
— not much, I think, — but mark what follows ! 
“ A wonderfully suggestive thought, opening up views of 
the nature of the chemical processes of the living body, 
which have hardly yet received all the development of which 
they are capable.* 
“ Kant defined the special peculiarity of the living body to 
be that ‘ the parts exist for the sake of the whole, and the 
whole for the sake of the parts/ But when Tar pin and 
Schwann resolved the living body into an aggregation of 
quasi-independent cells, each, like a torula ,+ leading its own 
life, and having its own laws of growth and development, the 
aggregation being dominated and kept working towards a 
definite end only by a certain harmony amongst these units, 
or by the superaddition of a controlling apparatus, such as a 
nervous system, this conception ceased \ to be tenable 
I have published my adhesion to the above view of Kant in 
a work which I have placed in the library of the Institute.! 
I have minutely described the trees I had under examination 
as to (1) the heart wood, (2) the leaves, (3) the course of the 
ascending sap, (4) the alkaloids formed in the bark, (5) the 
influence of respiration, and, in conclusion, “ the plant as an 
organised whole ,” and 1 remarked that this last definition 
is the conclusion to which I have been brought, — indeed, I 
might almost say compelled to come, so that I place no faith 
in any of the theories of vegetation which isolate the different 
parts of the plant, but I agree with Kant in what seems to me 
a clear definition that “the cause of the particular mode of 
existence of a living body resides in the whole,” and with 
Miiller, from whose Physiology I quote, “ that there is in 
living or organic matter a principle constantly in action, the 
operations of which are in accordance with a rational plan, 
so that the individual parts which it creates in the body are 
adapted to the design of the whole , and this it is which 
DISTINGUISHES ORGANISM.” 
* Critiques and Addresses, p. 86. 
X Quinology of the E. I. Plantations, p. 19, 
f Yeast plant. 
