Note 41 — Chapter XII · CHANGES OF SHAPE OTHERWISE CAUSED.

It is but just to the memory of Wolff, here to point out that he was immensely in advance of Goethe in his rationale of these metamorphoses. Whatever greater elaboration Goethe gave to the theory considered as an induction, seems to me more than counter-balanced by the irrationality of his deductive interpretation; which unites mediæval physiology with Platonic philosophy. A dominant idea with him is that leaves exist for the purpose of carrying off crude juices—that “as long as there are crude juices to be carried off, the plant must be provided with organs competent to effect the task”; that while “the less pure fluids are got rid of, purer ones are introduced” and that “if nourishment is withheld, that operation of nature (flowering) is facilitated and hastened; the organs of the nodes (leaves) become more refined in texture, the action of the purified juices becomes stronger, and the transformation of parts having now become possible, takes place without delay.” This being the proximate explanation, the ultimate explanation is, that Nature wishes to form flowers—that when a plant flowers it “attains the end prescribed to it by nature”; and that so “Nature at length attains her object.” Instead of vitiating his induction by a teleology that is as unwarranted in its assigned object as in its assigned means, Wolff ascribes the phenomena to a cause which, whether sufficient or not, is strictly scientific in its character. Variation of nutrition is unquestionably a “true cause” of variation in plant-structure. We have here no imaginary action of a fictitious agency; but an ascertained action of a known agency.