Ferdinand Julius Cohn

“ A state is, without doubt, in many respects a single organism, which maintains an independent, often sharply denned, unchanged character through centuries, and marks its domain as an indivisible, also as a real individual. Each state has its own development-history: it is founded, it grows, reaches its prime, and decays; it has its life-economy, for the functions of which it maintains its particular organs, its officers. ”

“ Immense mines of ore, inexhaustible coal-beds, surround us wherever we may be. For the minerals that are contained in the field soils are quite as precious as are the mines of iron and zinc, yes, even of gold and silver. Man can not live on gold and silver; but out of the minerals of the field-soil, out of potash, lime, phosphoric acid, ammonia, and sulphuric acid, the cell-state of the plant prepares bread on which we live, linen in which we clothe ourselves, wood out of which we make our vessels and tools, and the remedies which when we are sick restore our lost health to us. ”

“ The leading idea that knits the plant-cells into a state-organism is the same as in the bee-hive or the human state, the division of labor. Each cell possesses its individual life and passes through its particular course of development; it, however, does not undertake all the works of life, but limits the circle of its activities so as to reach a greater perfection within a smaller limit. In this it works not for itself alone but for the other cells also, while it commits to them those requirements for the satisfaction of which its individual activity is not sufficient. ”

“ The buds are started in the summer, completed in the fall; are dormant during the winter, and are awakened to new life in the spring. The scale-armor now becomes superfluous, is cast aside; the little leaves rack and stretch themselves, and joyfully spread themselves out in the air and light; the little stalk grows longer and longer; in a little while the buds have shot out into young limbs, in the fresh foliage of which, excited by the light of the sun, the restless labor of the cells begins anew ”

“ It would be an error to represent a living being as anything constant, its appearance as anything steady; life in truth resembles a water-fall, which only apparently preserves a constant form, while in reality none of the particles of water keep their places, but are continually removed and replaced by new ones. The visible form of stillness is kept up only in perpetual movement. Life resembles a flame, which restlessly consumes itself and can shed an even light only when new particles come up in place of those which have been burned, only to be dissipated in their turn a moment later. ”

“ Nature continues eternally young; the earth adorns itself every spring with leaf and flower, having the same freshness and youthful vigor as when for the first time He "let it bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind." ”

“ If we apply this view which we have gained of the rejuvenation of nature to the consideration of a single being, whether it be man, animal, or plant, we shall perceive that all life rests upon a constant renewal. Life is an uninterrupted contest with death, which attacks it every moment, but is beaten back by rejuvenation. ”

“ NOTHING is more sure than that all life is subject to age and death, and yet nothing is more contradictory to our feelings. In the vigor of youth our body feels as if it was created to last for ever; why must the highest work of art wear out and break down with time? ”

“ We have taken the converse course, and have endeavored to make the life of the plant and its cells comprehensible by a similitude with a state organization and its citizens. We have endeavored to show that what man has regarded as the highest ideal of his conscious effort in the struggles of the world's history has been prefigured in quiet accomplishment in the world of plants. It is the representative of the idea of the state which leaves its individual citizens to develop themselves freely according to their inborn natures, and to work together on an equal footing for the good of the whole ”

“ The plant is not therefore indivisible, like the animal; its individual members are in a much higher measure independent and competent to live. We may say the animal is a single being, each of its members is only a part, not itself a whole, only an organ, not itself an individual. The plant, on the other hand, is a composite being, a chain of individuals, each of which possesses an independent life, but all of which are connected in a collective life of a higher order; the plant is an organism the organs of which are themselves organisms. ”

“ A tree indeed appears to be a single being, sinking the net-work of its roots into the ground, raising its slender trunk into the air and spreading out above the web of its limbs and boughs. The members of which the tree consists may be regarded as its organs. It sucks up its nourishment through its roots, it breathes through its leaves, it propagates its species through its flowers. ”

“ But in nature nothing is great and nothing little, and there is room, even in the smallest cell, for the greatest diversity and development of the powers of life. A continuous formation and transformation, origin and decay, a constant change of matter, is going on in every cell; reception and assimilation of food, inspiration and expiration; certain atoms which have become of no use for purposes of life are cast aside, others are taken up from without in their places; on this food and change of substance depend the renovation of the cell and the maintenance of its life. ”

“ No animal can live on air, water, and earth alone, like the plants; no animal can combine the simple chemical combinations, as they occur in lifeless nature, into the life-substance protoplasm. The animal must draw the substance of his flesh and blood from the plant, for his own vital forces are not competent to produce it. The plant-cells alone possess the faculty of ennobling the simple combinations of lifeless nature into matter fitted for life. Every cell, furthermore, possesses another art, that of forming different fabrics out of the same raw material. ”

“ And, notwithstanding the immense progress that modern chemistry has made within the last ten years, its art is still limited at this point: no prospect yet exists that it will be able, artificially, to produce the most important of all the substances that go to build up the bodies of animals and plants, and to form their living cell-tissues—protoplasm, or the envelope of the plant-cells, the matter of the muscles and nerves. ”

“ But the fountain of youth has not been found, and can not be found if it is sought in any particular spot on the earth. Yet it is no fable, no dream-picture; it requires no adept to find it: it streams forth inexhaustible in all living nature. ”

“ And although the human race, although also the other kinds of animals and plants, show as yet no trace of age in spite of the numerous thousands of years in which they have dwelt on the earth, still each individual is perishable, it grows old and dies; but new generations shove themselves uninterruptedly into the gap, so that the whole abide in the freshness of youthful vigor. Rejuvenation so dwells in nature that every individual runs through a limited circle of development, and is finally worn out and cut off, to be replaced by fresh members which pass anew through the accomplished cycle. ”

“ The cell utilizes a part of its food for its own growth; but, sooner or later, the growth ceases, and the cell, keeping the form and size it has acquired, becomes a permanent cell. It is round or oval, or resembles a many-sided crystal. Some cells become flat and square, like a tile; some put out rays, like a star, or form a zigzag, like the wall of a fortress; many lengthen themselves out. The inner structure, also, of the cell changes with age; the envelope, delicate and thin in youth, afterward receives accretions and ornaments. ”

“ Thus the different functions are so divided among the different cells that one makes this, another that, occupation its own special business. The cells of the cell-state so arrange themselves in their different offices that they work mutually into each other's hands: one lives for all, all for one. The more perfectly the division is carried out, the more completely can each cell fulfill the duty for which it is designed; the more highly organized is the cell-state, and the higher position does the whole plant take in the order of growths. ”

“ If we carry our similitude to the end, we may liken the animal to a compact, centralized, unitary state, the members of which have entirely lost their independence, and in which a single will rules the whole; while we may represent the plant as a freely organized federal state, the members of which, in spite of their resignation to the whole body, have yet preserved a certain degree of independence and self-administration. ”

“ Earth, air, and water are the food of plants; fire, or rather light and heat, are the forces that set agoing the play of life in the cells. The most important food of plants is contained in the mineral solutions which the water, penetrating the soil, extracts from it, and in the oxygen and carbonic acid which they derive from the air. ”

“ The cells of the roots, like hewers and miners, sink numerous shafts in the spaces assigned to them, drive their galleries toward all points of the compass, in order to break up these mineral treasures, separate them from the incasing stone, and set the machinery of service in motion; day and night with inexhaustible diligence, they extract atom by atom of potash and ammonia, phosphoric and nitric acid, and, without working up their ore, deliver it over to the conducting vessels which transmit it by their powerful system of sucking and forcing pumps to the stem and the leaves. ”

“ Such in its principal features is the economy of the plant-cell. It is fed by the absorption of fluid and gaseous foods; it elaborates those foods into the most diversified products; it respires; it strengthens and thickens its shell, yet in such a manner that it can continue in living intercourse with its neighbors; it propagates itself by splitting into daughter-cells; it grows old and dies. Let us now glance at the arrangements and laws according to which the cells act in organic connection as citizens of a single state. ”

“ The leaves are cell-villages which perform their daily tasks in the air and the light. Their principal business is to obtain coal, which is the chief constituent of the vegetable body. Our atmosphere is an enormous coal-mine, many miles in thickness, that can not be exhausted in thousands of thousands of years. The coal, indeed, is not found pure in the air, any more than the metal in the ore, but is in combination with oxygen as a transparent gas, carbonic acid, and a peculiar art is required to separate it. ”

“ The more formidable the contradiction between inexhaustible life-joy and inevitable fate, the greater the longing which reveals itself in the kingdom of poetry and in the self-created world of dreams hopes to banish the dark power of reality. ”

“ The grasses and flowers, it is true, which this year are cut or withered, the leaves and blossoms which the wind has to-day blown from the trees, will not assist in forming its robe in the next spring, but Nature draws out new shoots from the old roots, new leaves from the old branches, and thus rejuvenates herself with every new year. ”

“ The state also acts in external affairs as a single organism; it makes war, it establishes enterprises for the general benefit, it builds important works, etc. But if the state thus appears as a single whole, so also it may be regarded on the other side as a collection of provinces; each province is a state in miniature, likewise organized in itself; and history furnishes us with numerous examples in which single provinces have been able to cut loose from the collective state and maintain themselves as independent state-organisms. ”