64 



CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN 



Superstition 

 of the 

 mandrake 



Can a man- 

 drake feel? 



from that usually entertained, and yet he 

 does not wish to claim more than well-estab- 

 lished facts and reasonable analogy will up- 

 hold. 



An old superstition ascribed to the man- 

 drake, a common plant of the Mediterranean 

 region, a supersensitiveness that caused it to 

 utter such cries of pain when drawn from the 

 earth "that living mortals, hearing them, go 

 mad." This marvelous anthropomorphic ex- 

 hibition was associated, so it was said, with 

 an equally marvelous resemblance of the plant 

 to a human body wherein lay the reasonable- 

 ness of the plant's behavior. 



By logical extension of modern deductions 

 regarding the nature of the physical basis of 

 life and the unity of ecological methods in its 

 expression, it is not too much to claim that a 

 more genuine agreement exists between man- 

 drakes and man than the superficial one of 

 form that appealed so powerfully to the 

 ancients ; in fact, as is well known at present, 

 the representatives of both kingdoms not 

 only grow, breath and require food, but they 

 respond to changes in environment by being 

 irritable. On the one hand the irritability 

 rises, especially among the higher animals, to 

 a clear exhibition of feeling, capable of induc- 

 ing suffering ; what is there in the logic of the 

 situation that prevents us from assuming 



