164 From Matter to Man. 



with embryo roots which find another but a different 

 kind of stomach in the soil to which it becomes 

 attached and through which it feeds, the protophyte 

 would die. 



Herein, therefore, we obtain the distinction so often 

 sought for between a plant and an animal as well 

 as the link of connection between them. Both are 

 magnets with magnetic apparatus, but the power or 

 life-giving central organ, the stomach or battery, is 

 differently arranged. In the plant it is outside of it, 

 but grasping firmly its lower poles. In the animal it 

 is inside, with all the mechanism surrounding it, as a 

 boiler continually generating steam. And as it is the 

 steam which lifts the lid of the kettle, or drives the 

 huge mechanism of the locomotive or steamship, so 

 it is the same energy which fires the tiny engine 

 of the microscopic spore, or inflates the expansive 

 mechanism of the human fool. 



The sequence of energy in a plant thus simply is, 

 that suitable materials are chemically dissolved by 

 every plant in its own soil battery : these materials 

 are absorbed by the root-hairs through the law of 

 like-material-attraction, and are distributed throughout 

 the plant by the plant's own mechanism, from the 

 battery as one pole to the upper pole or extremities, 

 or from the axis of the plant as a magnetic centre to 

 the roots and branches as opposed poles ; the design 

 of both roots and branches being superintended by 

 nature's sleepless artist — Polarity. 



