CHAPTER V 

 THE "INTELLIGENCE" OF PLANTS 



Plants have a logic of their own and act on it, just as we do, so that 

 we cannot dispute their intelligence. Le Dantec. 



How then are we to assess the plant's part in Psychogenesis ? 

 What, first of all, are the achievements of the vegetable world 

 in the way of " mind " ? There exists but scant literature on 

 the subject. Fechner has written some good chapters in estima- 

 tion of the plant's general status, conceding a relatively high 

 place to its " mentality." More recently, Prof. Henri Bergson 

 has expressed the view, now widely entertained, that the plant 

 is characterised by a consciousness asleep and by insensibility ; 

 the animal showing by contrast sensibility and awakened con- 

 sciousness. Some fifty years after Fechner, however, M. 

 Maeterlinck published a stimulating essay on L 'intelligence 

 des Fleurs, which, based as it is on the most up-to-date knowledge 

 of plant life, lends itself well to an examination of the subject. 



Maeterlinck, be it premised, as he is at pains to insist himself, 

 has written according to evidence, and by no means according 

 to romance. True, he has taken up a subject long left to imagina- 

 tion, but he wishes above all to appeal to reason. It would be 

 difficult to realise, he tells us, unless one had studied Botany a 

 little, how much of imagination and of genius lies hidden amidst 

 all that verdure of plant life which is so pleasing to the eye. The 

 more we study the doings of the plant, he continues, the more 

 we find that it sets a prodigious example of self-reliance, courage, 

 perseverance and ingenuity. He thinks that plant intelligence 

 arose out of the need of movement and out of the " appetite 

 for space." In his own words : 



This need of movement, this craving for space, amongst the greater 

 number of plants, is manifested in both the flower and the fruit. It is 

 easily explained in the fruit, or, in any case, discloses a less complex 

 experience and foresight. Contrary to that which takes place in the animal 

 kingdom, and because of the terrible law of absolute immobility, the chief 

 and worst enemy of the seed is the paternal stock (" souche "). We are 

 in a strange (" bizarre ") world, where the parents, incapable of moving 



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