ORGANIC DEPENDENCE AND DISEASE 11 



pression; the primary division of the whole kingdom of 

 life is based upon the interpretation of this fact. Let us 

 consider the plant world, the trees of the forest and the 

 lilies of the field. They are clothed in a majesty and beauty 

 before which the attainments of the animal kingdom pale. 

 In the earliest life ages of the world, the days that geolo- 

 gists have called the Proterozoic, the multicellular progeny 

 of the earliest unicellular beings whose simplest beginnings 

 we are slowly coming to know, determined through adapta- 

 tion the entire subsequent course of life upon the earth. 

 With our present understanding I believe it safe to say that 

 the career of the life record on earth was laid down, ' ' con- 

 ceived in the lowest parts of the earth, ' ' when some of these 

 progeny found it to their material advantage to anchor 

 themselves and to draw sustenance out of the soil or sea 

 bottom where they stood, while to others fell the lot to seek, 

 or being of more pronounced excitation and reaction, chose 

 to seek their food from place to place. Those became de- 

 pendent, the latter retained their independence; and there 

 came the great cleft in the world of life, a cleft so deep and 

 so enduring that time has had no power to heal it. A great 

 tree may well be of more service to the community than a 

 man, some human derelict, but a tree will never become a 

 man, nor anything else than a tree. In all the bewildering 

 developments of the plant kingdom in which we find organs 

 and fluids for the digestion of flesh, organs of special sense 

 implying a nerve system that yields to and perhaps inter- 

 prets the impacts of touch and of light, functions which 

 have led undisciplined philosophers to the fancy that this 

 apparent assumption of special functions indicates a refine- 

 ment of anatomy which approaches the bridging of the 

 abyss between plant and animal, the plant in its most im- 

 pressive attainment still remains anchored and rooted, 

 sometimes tossed about or floated by the waters but essen- 

 tially devoid of independent motion. 



The significant fact, supported by the most tangible and 



