Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/197

 The sentences here quoted to show Braun's philosophical position still give no idea of the way in which the principles embodied in them influence the whole manner of presenting the facts in the arrangement of his empirical material, but to give a clear idea of this is impossible in so brief a notice as the present. His conception of his subject is shown still more distinctly in a treatise which appeared three years later, entitled 'Das Individuum der Pflanze in seinem Verhältniss zur Species, Generationsfolge, Generationswechsel und Generationstheilung der Pflanze' (1852-3). The definition of the word individual is here sought, as that of rejuvenescence was in the previous work,—a really difficult task, if we consider how many meanings have been assigned to this word in the course of time; in the individuals or atoms of Epicurus, the individuals or monads of Leibnitz, the atoms of modern chemistry, the speculations of the schoolmen on the 'principium individuationis' as opposed to the reality which they assigned to universal conceptions, and in the customary application of the word in every-day language, in which a man or a single tree is called an individual, we have the general views of various centuries, showing how the sense and meaning of old words become changed, not unfrequently into their exact opposites. From the nominalist position of modern natural science this is of little importance, because this treats words and ideas as mere instruments for mutual understanding, and seeks no meaning in either which has not been previously and purposely assigned to them. Braun's mode of proceeding is quite different; by comparison of very various phenomena of vegetation, and by examining former views on the subject of the individual plant, he seeks to demonstrate a deeper meaning which must be connected with the word.

Moreover, he makes the enquiry into the individual only a thread on which to string his own reflections, in the course of which he once more explains the principles of the teleological nature-philosophy, and points out its opposition to modern