Nature s Intelligence 109 



violation of moral right, unless the act is justified, 

 as in the taking of the life of an animal for use, or 

 because the plant destroyed is hurtful to the inter- 

 ests of the lower animals or of man. That plants 

 find pleasure in existence is as obvious as that ani- 

 mals do. That the sensitive plant has a nervous 

 system, and that carnivorous plants take pleasure 

 in food, goes without question. Thus much briefly 

 in regard to the intelligence of plants. The reader 

 can extend the illustrations indefinitely. 



Traces of moral character are not less recogniz- 

 able. But we must remember that to identify vege- 

 table morality we must not require of it all the 

 qualities of morality in man. Because red colored 

 clay, tinted with iron oxide, is not a polished sword- 

 blade is no reason why we should deny the presence 

 of iron. Let us analyze, ethically, any beautiful 

 flower. We find first a gentle, candid, innocent 

 aspect, which reaches quite beyond our sense of 

 physical harmony and stirs the sense of moral 

 beauty. How is that fact to be accounted for? 

 Next we find the plant appealing to our sense of 

 physical beauty. So far as the plant's individual 

 interests are to be conserved, there is no necessity 

 for this. Its immaculate coloring, tracery, shad- 

 ing, are all beyond the plant's individual necessities. 

 A rude and flashy splotch of color would attract the 

 eyes of the bees and butterflies quite as well as all 

 this exquisite beauty, unless we suppose an aesthetic 

 faculty in those insects, which supposition, while it 



