MENTALITY AND SPIRITUALITY 195 



"When plants find themselves in extraordinary 

 positions, they often do things which seem to be 

 something more than cases of cause and effect." 

 The inherent nature of plants may account for 

 their regular habits of living ; but only some mental 

 suggestion can account for their abandonment of 

 the regular and their adoption of the irregular. 

 This physical sense, the sense of the fitness of 

 things, has its origin not in instinct but in intellect 

 in a reasoning power. 



One of the most striking examples of reasoning 

 action in plant life is cited by an American woman, 

 Mrs. Treat, who proved conclusively that the leaves 

 of the plant actually were conscious of the nearness 

 of insects, even when there was no contact between 

 the plant and the body of the insect. This was 

 demonstrated by pinning a live fly half an inch 

 from a leaf of sundew r , whereupon the leaf moved 

 itself within the succeeding two hours near enough 

 to fasten its tentacles about the insect. Perhaps 

 this realisation of the insect's proximity was a mat- 

 ter of "passive" mentality, of hearing, or seeing, or 

 smelling, or a psychic sense ; but the voluntary mo- 

 tion toward it cannot fairly be attributed to any 

 source other than to a degree of reasoning power 

 and a definite understanding of the circumstances, 

 on the part of the plant. 



