Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/188

 large part of the results of the study of the history of development were first brought into the true light by the consistent application of the theory, or in the effort to disprove it. With all its fundamental errors, Schimper's theory remains one of the most interesting phenomena in the history of morphology, because it was carried out with thorough logical consistency. We should as little wish to omit it from our literature, as modern astronomy would wish to see the old theory of epicycles disappear from its history. Both theories served to connect together the facts that were known in their time.

The fundamental error of the theory lies much deeper than appears at first sight. Here too we have the idealistic conception of nature, which refuses to know anything of the causal nexus, because it takes organic forms for the ever-recurring copies of eternal ideas, and in accordance with this platonic sphere of thought confounds the abstractions of the mind with the objective existence of things. This confusion shows itself in Schimper's doctrine, inasmuch as he takes the geometrical constructions, which he transfers to his plants and which, though they may be highly suitable from his point of view, are nevertheless purely arbitrary, for actual characters of the plants themselves, in other words, takes the subjective connection of the leaves by a spiral line for a tendency inherent in the nature of the plant. Schimper in making his constructions overlooked the fact that, because a circle can be described by turning a radius round one of its extremities, it does not follow that circular surfaces in nature must really have been formed in this way; in other words, he did not see that the geometrical consideration of arrangements in space, useful as it may otherwise be, gives no account of the causes to which they are due. But this was not properly an oversight in Schimper's case, for he would have scarcely admitted efficient causes in the true scientific sense into his explanations of the form of plants. How far Schimper was from regarding plants as