200 THE HUMAN SIDE OF PLANTS 



radiates the inspiration to happiness and sweetness 

 and goodness must be the universal spirit, the spirit 

 of God. The inspiration from the beautiful flower 

 must be from the spirituality of the flower, from 

 the degree of the universal spirit in the flower. 



"All life," writes Thomas Gentry, "like all love, 

 is divine. There can nothing exist that does not 

 contain some sort of development of soul." 



In ancient literature are many instances of races 

 worshipping and making obeisance to trees, plants, 

 and their flowers. In this "plant worship" is one 

 of the greatest and most important tributes to the 

 spirituality of plants. The tree- worshipper and the 

 flower-worshipper were but acceding to the demand 

 from within, the desire of their souls to commune 

 with the universal spirit, the spirit of the Creator, 

 of God, as it appeared to them in the living plants. 



And this is the appeal of the beautiful flower, 

 the delicate plant, the soft-shaded leaf, the sighing 

 tree. Back of the beauty and the sweetness is a 

 deep, underlying consciousness, a spirituality of the 

 all-permeating universal spirit, of which this beauty 

 and this sweetness are the means of expression. 

 The appeal is of the plant-spirituality through the 

 senses to the soul of men; it is a commingling, a 

 blending, of members of the universal spirit. 



And here, in this membership in the universal 



