Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/195

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Chap. IV.]
Metamorphosis and of the Spiral Theory.
175

working as an inner determination and force from the depth of the inner nature.' A passage also from page 111 of his treatise on polyembryony, published in 1860, may be quoted here; 'Though the organism, in the process of realising itself, is subject to physical conditions, yet the proper causes of its morphological and biological characteristics do not lie in these conditions; its laws belong to a higher stage of development of its being, to a sphere in which the faculty of self-determination is distinctly manifested. If this is so, the laws of an organic being appear as tasks imposed, the fulfilling of which is not absolutely necessary but only in relation to the attainment of a definite end, as precepts, to which strict obedience may possibly not be paid.' To return once more to the idea of rejuvenescence, we find at page 18 the words, 'As regards the idea of rejuvenescence, from the foregoing considerations we draw the conclusion, that the surrender of growths already accomplished and the going back to new beginnings, the commencement of rejuvenescence, indicate only the outer side of the proceeding, while the essential part of it is an inner gathering up of forces, a new creating, as it were, out of the individual principle of life, a fresh reflecting upon the specific task or the gaining renewed hold upon the type which is to be presented in the outer organism. By this means rejuvenescence maintains its fixed relation to development, which can and ought to present in gradually attained perfection that only which lies in the nature of the creature, and is most intimately its own.' And at the conclusion of the work (page 347) he says, 'The way in which the inner spiritual nature of life is specially manifested in the phenomenon of rejuvenescence may be defined as reminiscence in the true sense of the word, as the power of grasping anew in the phenomenon the inner destination of life as contrasted with its daily alienation and decay, and applying it with renewed strength towards that which is without,' etc.

This conception of rejuvenescence is, then, applied to all the phenomena of life in plants; not only the metamorphosis of