342 Life and Immortality. 



markings as well. And thus while degeneracy, as observed 

 in the abortion of ovules, carpels and perianth, may be seen 

 everywhere, which the influences that have acted upon them 

 have induced, yet it is the height of presumption to assert 

 that consciousness has entirely abandoned the members of 

 the vegetable kingdom, and that they are reduced to the 

 condition of mere automata. It is true, as has been claimed, 

 that the permanent and the successful forms of organization 

 have ever been those in which motion and sensibility have 

 been preserved, as well as the most highly developed ; and 

 just as true it is that plants, even though fixed to the soil 

 and unable to effect a change of environment in consequence, 

 are not so incapable of conscious actions as not to be able to 

 meet any changes, and these changes do very often occur, 

 that climate, new conditions of soil, helps or hindrances to 

 growth and wear, may bring about. That they must adapt 

 themselves to such changes, or perish in their struggle to 

 exist, none can question. It is not enough to say that 

 natural selection affords an explanation of every phenomenon 

 that they may exhibit. There is an energy within the plant, 

 think and write as we will, and it is this that comes to its 

 aid and directs the movement that will be productive of the 

 most good. 



Concluding, then, let me aver that no plant can exist or 

 fulfil its allotted part in the drama of life without the pos- 

 session of some form or degree of consciousness. If it be 

 true that life and consciousness preceded organization, and 

 the statement can hardly be disputed, and have been the 

 primum mobile in the creation of organic structure, what 

 reason, seeing that life necessarily persists in vegetable organ- 

 ism, can be given for their dissociation in existing forms 

 of plants, as seems to be the tendency of modern scientific 

 thought ? That plants once possessed consciousness, there 

 can be no difference of opinion. Well, then, what has 

 become of this consciousness? It could not have been 

 destroyed, for energy or force, and consciousness certainly 



