1 84 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



be due primarily to the difference in the potential pow- 

 ers of the materials and methods utilized in growing, 

 not to any extrinsic circumstance. 



But the incomparably larger results attained by ani- 

 mals individually are by no means wholly due to the 

 creative powers of their own germinal materials or 

 methods of growth. They are due in large measure to 

 the supplementary activities of the whole plant king- 

 dom, for plants supply, and they alone can do so, the 

 essential structural materials for animal life. And ani- 

 mals reciprocate by performing indispensable services 

 for plant life. In fact, each supplements the other 

 and both act like two different organs performing their 

 respective functions in unison for the common body 

 of nature life. 



From this point of view, there is no reason to as- 

 sume that somewhere, or somehow, the plant made a" 

 mistake, so to speak, in the adoption of an inferior, or 

 vegetative, method of living, one that cani never attain 

 the freedom and versatility of animal life; and one 

 whose highest product is a fruit, or a flower, beauti- 

 ful, it may.be, and serviceable to both plant and animal, 

 but without intelligence. But even so, the fruit and 

 the flower play but a minor part in the service of plants 

 to animals. It is the plant's basic method of living 

 which is the more fundamental and important thing, 

 as essential to the evolution of consciousness and intelli- 

 gence as sense organs and nerves. For plants are the 

 living bridges which unite man constructively to the 

 sun and the soil; over these busy bridges, nature sends 

 her merchandise from the inorganic to the organic 

 world, from the physical to the spiritual and back 

 again, tying all nature traffic into one. 



