CHAPTER I.
History of the Sexual Theory.
1. From Aristotle to R. J. Gamer Arius.
It will contribute to a correct appreciation of the discoveries made towards the end of the 17th century by Rudolph Jacob Camerarius and his successors in regard to the sexual relations of plants, if we first make ourselves acquainted with all that was known of the matter up to that time from Aristotle downwards; we shall learn at the same time how extremely unfruitful was the superficial observation of the older philosophy in a question in which inductive research only could lead to real results.
That Aristotle[1] like many others after him reckoned sexual fertilisation among processes of nutrition, and thus failed to perceive the specific and peculiar character of the latter, is shown distinctly by his assertion, that the nutritive and propagative power of the soul is one and the same. This hasty generalisation was associated in Aristotle's mind with another error arising from very defective experience, which led him to bring sexuality in organisms into causal connection with their movement in space. He tells us in his botanical fragments, that in all animals which have the power of locomotion, the female is distinct from the male, one creature being female,
another male, but both being of the same species, as in humankind. In plants on the contrary these powers are combined and the male is not distinct from the female; each
- ↑ See Ernst Meyer, 'Geschichte der Botanik,' I. p. 98, &c.
