Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Report on the Progress of Vegetable Physiology: During the Year 1837
In'the corporeal life of the plant there 'exist intention, tendency, and means for their attainment; nay, we even see this controlled by the fitness of time, in the same way as in more highly endowed man. The plant, like the animal, has inward intentions to fulfil outwardly, fulfils them like the lat ter, and indeed, in the same way, more or less perfectly, ao cording to the various conditions of which they consist. There is therefore only a difference of degree between the unknown unity which predominatcs over all this activity, and which in man is termed his soul, and the spontaneous power analogous to this soul which the plant exhibits in action during its whole life, &c. We do therefore an injustice to the plant when we consider it as not being like the animal endowed with a common primary force, penetrating through all parts and directing them all to certain actions. From these views, however, it would result, that all inorganic bodies are also endowed with a soul, a thought, which has been already asserted in the most an cient times; nay, Von Martins arrives at the conclusion, that everything earthly, and therefore also the plant, possesses a soul, and the numberless fraternity of similar creatures which act so prominent a part in the universal life of our planet, are, according to their scale, governed by a soft peaceful spirit, an Anima blandula, trepidula. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
