Volume 3

A report on the progress of vegetable physiology during the year 1837 ... / Translated from the German by William Francis.

  • Franz Meyen
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A report on the progress of vegetable physiology during the year 1837 ... / Translated from the German by William Francis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    forms, phenomena occur which belong to animal life, such for instance, as the manifold various motions which have been observed in plants: in fact that animal life and vegetable life appear in no way to be so decidedly separated from each other, and for that reason, therefore, a soul cannot be admitted in animals alone and denied to vegetables. ven the predomi- nant growth and the propagation of plants appear to indicate that they are not confined to the circle of rigid necessity ; and we must recognise in them a kind of predetermination, a tendency to the ideal, consequently a higher vital principle, asoul. The soul of plants is much less complex than that of animals ; it is in fact, in itself, of a more obscure and unde- fined nature. Perception, imagination, consciousness, sensa- tion, desire, volition, appear here to have sunk into the night of a gloomy, confined existence, and the narrow path of ana- logy and induction towards this subject, unattainable by our inquiries, is open to us but for a short distance. The vege- table soul must not however be compared with the soul of man, or with that of the higher animals, but rather with the nucleus or that point of the axis only, around which the life of the low- est and most simple animals revolves. Von Martius thinks that we can admit of no organ of soul in plants; yet we may probably succeed, as I think, in our time in discovering this organ even in plants; the nervous system has, as is well known, been already observed in vegetables by some learned botanists, although others, it is true, have not been able to convince themselves of the fact. A series of phenomena are moreover enumerated, such as the specific susceptibility of plants for the actions of light, heat, air, moisture, &c., which, without a certain degree of sympathy and of perception, without a kind of internal con- sciousness, could not possibly have effect. Perhaps in them all the various grades of spiritual action combine to produce one single obscure idea. The more general and intense the irritation which acts upon plants, the more powerful is the perception. The sleeping and waking of plants, as also their hybernation, correspond exactly to the similar phenomena — in animals, only that these states in-plants are involuntary. The soul of the plant is diffused throughout it; in so far how- B2 ee s. =,
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