themselves ; whilst in the more highly developed vegetable 

 forms, phsenomena occur which belong to animal life, such 

 for instance, as the manifold various motions which have been 

 observed in plants : in fact that animal life and vegetable life 

 appear in no way to be so decidedly separated from each other, 

 and for that reason, therefore, a soul cannot be admitted in 

 animals alone and denied to vegetables. Even the predomi- 

 nant growth and the propagation of plants appear to indicate 

 that they are not confined to the circle of rigid necessity; and 

 we must recognise in them a kind of predetermination, a 

 tendency to the ideal, consequently a higher vital principle, 

 a soul. The soul of plants is much less complex than that of 

 animals ; it is in fact, in itself, of a more obscure and unde- 

 fined nature. Perception, imagination, consciousness, sensa- 

 tion, desire, volition, appear here to have sunk into the night 

 of a gloomy, confined existence, and the narrow path of ana- 

 logy and induction towards this subject, unattainable by our 

 inquiries, is open to us but for a short distance. The vege- 

 table soul must not however be compared with the soul of man., 

 or with that of the higher animals, but rather with the nucleus 

 or that point of the axis only, around which the life of the low- 

 est and most simple animals revolves. Von Martius thinks 

 that we can admit of no organ of soul in plants ; yet we may 

 probably succeed, as I think, in our time in discovering this 

 organ even in plants ; the nervous system has, as is well 

 known, been already observed in vegetables by some learned 

 botanists, although others, it is true, have not been able to 

 convince themselves of the fact. 



A series of phenomena are moreover enumerated, such as 

 the specific susceptibility of plants for the actions of light, 

 heat, air, moisture, &c., which, without a certain degree of 

 sympathy and of perception, without a kind of internal con- 

 sciousness, could not possibly have effect. Perhaps in them 

 all the various grades of spiritual action combine to produce 

 one single obscure idea. The more general and intense the 

 irritation which acts upon plants, the more powerful is the 

 perception. The sleeping and waking of plants, as also their 

 hybernation, correspond exactly to the similar phenomena 

 in animals, only that these states in plants are involuntary. 

 The soul of the plant is diffused throughout it ; in so far how- 



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