METAPHYSICAL VAGARIES 425 
A slightly condensed translation of Braun's ^ ' Eejuven- 
escence of Plants ' appeared in 1854. 
To T. H. Huxley 
September 12, 1854. 
I have been groaning over ' Rejuvenescence ' que Diable ! 
When is this German rubbish to end ? Do read the first 20 
pages and tell me your candid opinion as a scientific man : 
I confess to a want of poetic feeling or at least of that turn 
of it that appreciates aesthetics in its modern application to 
spiders and toadstools, or also (and really in this case to my 
sorrow) of power to grasp metaphysical subjects, and what 
some think high-class imagery too, and so I really would feel 
it a personal favour if you would tell n^e whether I ought 
to understand, or admire, or see any depth in, or at least see 
nothing that should convince me that there was no depth in, 
the first 20 pages of that blessed production, Braun's Re- 
juvenescence. Mind you, I am a personal friend of Braun's 
and like his real scientific work extremely, I cannot applaud it 
too much, but there appears to me a wide difference between 
exact studies upon the physiology and structure of crypto- 
gamic plants, in which he excels, and upon the laws that 
regulate the development of organs, in which he is also good 
(though often fanciful), and these wild vagaries on the con- 
nection of life, soul, porridge, mouse-traps, and the divine 
essence. Braun's forte is mathematical precision and, like 
many other men of like mind, he cannot (at least so I think) 
distinguish between truth and nonsense when he takes up 
speculative subjects ; after all perhaps I am fighting with a 
shadow and I have a notion that after the 20th time of 
reading Henfrey's execrable parody of the original, and after 
[Black ?] (who is in Scotland) comes home, if I get him to en- 
lighten me on the German, I shall find that Braun's mountain 
will sink into a mole-hill and that I shall find he is only 
clothing very old ideas in very cumbrous and far-fetched 
garments. I am far from condemning the Ray Club for 
1 Alexander Braun (1805-77) was born at Regensbuxg and educated privately 
till 1815, when he was sent to Carlsruhe. He contributed to botany while still 
a schoolboy. After study at Heidelberg (1824), Munich (1827) and Paris, he 
became Professor (1832) and Director of the Natural History Museum at 
Carlsruhe and later at Berlin. He wrote many papers ; his most famous work 
is Das Individuum der Pflanze, iSpecies, Generations, dsc, 1853. 
