The plant : a biography in a series of thirteen popular lectures / by M.J. Schleiden ; translated by Arthur Henfrey.

  • Matthias Jacob Schleiden
Date:
1853
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The plant : a biography in a series of thirteen popular lectures / by M.J. Schleiden ; translated by Arthur Henfrey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    them, dries and wraps them up in paper, and whose whole wisdom is expended in the determination and classification of this ingeniously collected hay. This portrait of the Botanist was, alas ! once true, but it pains me to observe, that now, when it bears resemblance to so few, it is still held fast to by very many persons; and I have sought, therefore, in the present discourses, to bring within the sphere of general comprehension, the more important problems of the real science of Botany, to point out how closely it is connected w7ith almost all the most abstruse branches of philosophy and natural science, and to show how almost every fact or larger group of facts tends, as v7ell in Botany as in every other branch of human activity, to suggest the most earnest and weighty questions, and to carry mankind forward beyond the possessions of sense, to the anticipations of the spirit. If, through my efforts, the reader of these sketches shall hereafter hold a worthier opinion of Botany, and the Botanist shall form a more accurate conception of the compass and objects of our Science, I shall be content. Should they excite an interest for Botany itself in a wader circle, should one or other reader be led by my wTords to wish to penetrate further into these so agreeable and so inexhaustible questions, my desires wall be more than accomplished. A few words more, as to the mode of treatment of the subject may here find place. True to my own convictions, I have kept free from all the pratings of the physiophilo- sophers of the Schelling school, and I am firmly persuaded, that Science has no need of these fopperies to make it appear interesting to the uninitiated. Humboldt in his Views of Nature, Dove in his masterly Lectures on the Climate of Berlin, have proved that science may really
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