On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient...

[247] Vol. i. p. 245. 1826.

[248] Repeated in the "Times" of June 2nd, 1841.

[249] Vol. v. p. 171. Paris, 1826.

[250] C. H. Schultz, "Sur la Circulation dans les Plantes," a prize-essay, 1839.

[251] F. J. Meyen, "Neues System der Pflanzenphysiologe" (1839), vol. iii. p. 585.

[252] These have been translated for the "Bibliothèque Britannique, Section des Sciences et Arts," vol. lii.

[253] Treviranus, "Die Erscheinungen und Gesetze des Organischen Lebens" (Phenomena and Laws of Organic Life), vol. i. p. 173.

[254] Brandis, "On Life and Polarity," 1836, p. 88, says: "The roots of rock-plants seek nourishing mould in the most delicate crevices of rocks. These roots cling to a nourishing bone in dense clusters. I saw a root whose growth was intercepted by the sole of an old shoe: it divided itself into as many fibres as the shoe-sole had holes—those by which it had been stitched together—but as soon as these fibres had overcome the obstruction and grown through the holes, they united again to a common stem." And p. 87: "If Sprengel's observations are confirmed, even mediate relations are perceived (by plants) in order to obtain this end (fructification): that is to say, the anthers of the nigella bend down in order to put the pollen on the bees' backs, and the pistils bend in like manner to receive it from the bees." [Add. to 3rd ed.]

[255] In this connection I may mention an analysis of an entirely different kind, given by the French Academician Babinet in an article in which he treats of the seasons on the planets. It is contained in the No. of the 15th January, 1856, of the "Revue des Deux Mondes," and I will give the chief substance of it here in translation. The object of it is to refer to its direct cause the well-known fact, that cereals only thrive in temperate climates. "If grain did not necessarily perish in winter, if it were perennial, it would not bear ears, and there would be no harvest. In the hotter portions of Africa, Asia and America, where no winter kills the grain, these plants grow like grass with us: they multiply by means of shoots, remain always green, and neither form ears nor run to seed. In cold climates, on the contrary, the organism of these plants seems by some inconceivable miracle to feel, as it were by anticipation, the necessity of passing through the seed-phase in order to escape dying off in the winter season" (L'organisme de la plante, par un inconcevable miracle, semble préssentir la nécessité de passer par l'état de graine, pour ne pas périr complètement pendant la saison rigoureuse).

In a similar way, districts which have a "droughty season,"—that is to say a season in which all plants are parched up with drought—"tropical countries, for instance Jamaica, produce grain; because there the plant, moved by the same organic presentiment (par le même pressentiment organique), in order to multiply, hastens to bear seed at the approach of the season in which it would have to dry up." In the fact which this author describes as an inconceivable miracle, we recognise a manifestation of the plant's will in increased potency, since here it appears as the will of the species, and makes preparations for the future in a similar way to animal instinct, without being guided by knowledge of that future in doing so. Here we see plants in warmer climates dispensing with a complicated process to which a cold climate alone had obliged them. In similar instances animals do precisely the same thing, especially bees. Leroy in his admirable work "Lettres Philosophiques sur l'Intelligence des Animaux" (3rd letter, p. 231) relates, that some bees which had been taken to South America continued at first to gather honey as usual and to build their cells just as when they were at home; but that when they gradually became aware that plants blossom there all the year round, they left off working. The animal world supplies a fact analogous to the above mentioned change in the mode of multiplying in cereals. This is the abnormal mode of propagation for which the aphides have long been noted.

The female aphide, as is well known, propagates for 10-12 generations without any pairing with the male, and by a variety of the ovoviviparous process. This goes on all summer; but in autumn the males appear, impregnation takes place, and eggs are laid as winter quarters for the whole species, since it is only in this shape that it is able to outlive the winter. (Add. to 3rd ed.)

[256] Plat. "Tim." p. 403. Bip.

[257] "Die Welt a. W. u. V." vol. ii. chap. 23.

[258] Compare "Die Welt a. W. u. V." vol. ii. chap. 22: "Objective View of the Intellect."

[259]Plan.

Between two kinds of food, both equally

Remote and tempting, first a man might die

Of hunger, ere he one could freely chuse. (Cary's Tr.)

[261] Herschel, "Treatise on Astronomy," chap. 7, § 371 of the 1st edition, 1833.

[262] Even Copernicus had said the same thing long before "Equidem existimo Gravitatem non aliud esse quam appetentiam quandam naturalem, partibus inditam a divina providentia opificis universorum, ut in unitatem integritatemque suam se conferant, in formam Globi coeuntes. Quam affectionem credibile est etiam Soli, Lunæ cæterisque errantium fulgoribus, inesse, ut ejus efficacia, in ea qua se repraesentant rotunditate permaneant; quæ nihilominus multis modis suos efficiunt circuitus" ("Nicol. Copernici revol." Lib. I, Cap. IX. Compare "Exposition des Découvertes de M. le Chevalier Newton par M. Maclaurin; traduit de l'Anglois par M. Lavirotte," Paris, 1749, p. 45). Herschel evidently saw, that if we hesitate to explain gravity, as Descartes did, by an impulse from outside, we are absolutely driven to admit a will inherent in bodies, Non datur tertium. [Add. to 3rd ed.]

[263] Which he has more at heart than all the wisdom and truth in the world. [Add. to 3rd ed.]

[264] See "Die Welt a. W, u. V." vol. ii. ch. 4, pp. 38-42 (3rd edition, pp. 41-46).

[265] P. 74 (3rd edition, p. 79), p. 92 of the translation in the present volume.

[266] 3rd edition, p. 44.

[267] Plato, "Phæd." p. 319 Bip.

[268] "That which is moved by itself and that which is moved from outside." [Tr.] And we find the same distinction again in the 10th Book "De Legibus," p. 85. [After him Cicero repeats it in the two last chapters of his "Somnium Scipionis." Add. to 3rd ed.]

[269] "All that is moved, is moved either by itself or by something else." [Tr.] Aristotle, "Phys." vii. 2.

[270] Maclaurin, too, in his account of Newton's discoveries, p. 102, lays down this principle as his starting-point. [Add. to 3rd ed.]

[271] Émile, iv. p. 27. Bip.

[272] Burdach, "Physiologie," vol. iv. p. 323.

[273] Seneca, "Epist." 81.

[274]Ibid. "Quæst. nat." ii. 24.

[275] Plin. "Hist. nat." 37, 15.

[276] Aristot. "De Cœlo." ii. c. 13, "If a small particle of earth is lifted and let loose, it is carried away and will not rest." [Tr.'s add.]

[277]Ibid. c. 14, "But each thing ought to be named as it wills to be and really is according to its nature, not as it is by force and contrary to its nature." [Tr.'s add.]

[278] Arist. "Eth. Mag." i. c. 14.

[279] "Let the freely curling locks fall unarranged as they will [like]." [Tr.'s add.]

[280] "Y-King," ed. J. Mohl, vol. i. p. 341.

[281] Liebig, "Die Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Agrikultur," p. 394.

[282]Ibid. "Die Chemie in Anwendung auf Physiologie."