io8 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside 



The contest between materialism and spiritual- 

 ism has been narrowed down to the question whether 

 the combination and interaction of material forces 

 produce the phenomena of mind, or whether mind 

 co-ordinates both matter and its forces and laws to 

 its own service in building up and sustaining the 

 soul's material habitation. It is impossible for us 

 to sustain our positions against materialism unless 

 we are prepared to prove that something of the 

 same nature as the soul, and which exercises some 

 of the soul's functions, dwells in the plant's beauty 

 and activity. The phenomena are all on our side 

 of the question. Two wild grape-vines, planted 

 at short distances from and on opposite sides of a 

 tree, will, each moving in opposite directions, make 

 straight for the tree. The sunflower will gaze at 

 the sun all day, and turn its face eastward in the 

 night to catch the first beams of sunrise. The vine 

 will throw its tendrils straight out, and when a sup- 

 port is reached it will seize upon it. The elm sends 

 its roots toward the watercourse. The sensitive 

 plant takes alarm and pretends to be dead. Car- 

 nivorous plants show quite as much intelligence as 

 the lower orders of carnivorous animals. The dis- 

 tance, indeed, between vegetables and the lower 

 animals in the degrees of intelligence is not greater 

 than between the lower animals and man, or be- 

 tween man and the probable intelligence of the 

 order of beings next higher above him. I never 

 take the life of a flower without feeling that it is a 



