576 THE PLANT’S PLACE IN NATURE 
welfare, and that all we shall learn about this or any other 
aspect of their lives may serve to enrich our own. Thus, 
an inexhaustible interest as well as an increasing command 
over the resources of our world is the reward of our endeavor. 
An even deeper interest than belongs to any idea of use or 
harm is also sure to be aroused by watching the behavior of 
these our fellow-creatures that are so different from us in 
almost every way. For, again, these very differences give 
them an endless fascination as objects of study; and, finally, 
it is just these differences which enable us to distinguish the 
incidental from the essential powers of life. In these or- 
ganisms we see individualized wills expressed under condi- 
‘tions as different as possible from those which permit the 
action of our own power of choice. We cannot hope to 
fathom the mysteries to which the humblest plant may lead 
us; we can only say with the poet Tennyson— 
“Flower in the crannied wall, 
I pluck you out of the crannies, 
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
Little flower—but 7f I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is.” 
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