Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/194

 which idea no definition is actually given, though the whole contents of the book are a search after a definition. We may regard the idea of rejuvenescence, as presented by Braun, as an extension of the idea of metamorphosis, in which extended form it is adapted to take in even the results of the cell-theory, of the history of development, and of the modern knowledge of the Cryptogams from the idealistic point of view. One peculiarity of his mode of expounding his views is observed here, as on other occasions, namely, that he gives no precise and arbitrary definition to a word, for instance, like rejuvenescence in the present place, and in a later work to the word individual, but looks behind the word for a profound or even mysterious meaning, which is to be perceived and brought to light by contemplation of the phenomena. In page 5 he says, 'Thus we see youth and age appear alternately in one and the same history of development; we see youth burst through age, and by growth or transformation step into the middle of the development. This is the phenomenon of rejuvenescence, which is repeated in endless multiplicity in every province of life, but nowhere appears more clearly expressed or more accessible to investigation than in the vegetable kingdom. Without rejuvenescence there is no history of development.'—'If then we ask for the causes of the phenomena of rejuvenescence (page 7), we shall indeed allow that nature, into which special life enters in its various manifestations, excites, awakes, and works by the influences which the years and even the days bring with them; but the true and inner cause can only be found in the desire after perfection which belongs to every being in its kind, and urges it to bring the outer world, which is strange to it, more and more into complete subjection to itself, and to fashion itself in it as independently as its specific nature admits.' Further on he says (page 17), 'The impulse or tendency to development in each creature is likewise no direction of activity impressed from without, but one given from within and