causal connection. To this the Ideological mode of view was
inadequate, and it became necessary indeed to discard it as a
hindrance, in spite of the difficulty of explaining adaptation in the arrangements of organisms from any other than the teleological point of view. It is sufficient here to say that this
difficulty is satisfactorily removed by the theory of selection. This theory is become as important in this respect to physiology, as the theory of descent is to systematic botany and
morphology. If the theory of descent finally liberated the
morphological treatment of organisms from the influence of
scholasticism, it is the theory of selection which has made
it possible for physiology to set herself free from teleological explanations. Only an entire misunderstanding of the Darwinian doctrine can allow anyone to reproach it with falling back into teleology; its greatest merit is to have made teleology appear superfluous, where it seemed to naturalists in former times, in spite of all philosophical objections, to be indispensable.
If the comparison of plants with animals as well as the teleological conception of organisms promoted the first attempts at the physiological investigation of plants, other influences of decisive importance came into play when the time came for endeavouring to conceive and explain the causes and conditions of the functions, which had then been ascertained at least in their most obvious features. Phytotomy was here the chief resource. In proportion as the inner structure of plants was better known and the different kinds of tissue better distinguished, it became possible to bring the functions of organs, as made known by experiment, into connection with their microscopic structure; phytotomy dissected the living machine into its component parts, and could then leave it to physiology to discover from the structure and contents of the tissues, how far they were adapted to perform definite functions. Obviously this only became possible when the phenomena of vegetation had been previously studied in the living plant. For example, the
