CHAPTER XII 



SENSE-LIFE AND SENSIBILITY 



ONE of the most fascinating and yet perhaps the most 

 dangerous of all the many insidious temptations to 

 which a botanist may be exposed, is that of allowing 

 himself to speculate upon the sense-life or soul-life of 

 the plant world. 



Plants are undoubtedly alive. Animals and we 

 ourselves can appreciate the sunlight. Sunflowers and 

 foxgloves also mark their appreciation, and the inference 

 that they enjoy it, just as we do, is very difficult to 

 resist. An injured root curling itself up reminds us at 

 once of a writhing worm, and indeed all through the 

 phenomena of plant life one meets with instances 

 which, unless one is very careful, lead to what Dr. 

 Darwin describes as one of the seven deadly sins of 

 science, " anthropomorphism." 



The answer which is obvious and at first sight con- 

 clusive to all such sympathetic theories of plant life is, 

 that plants have no nerves and cannot therefore possess 

 either consciousness or indeed enjoyment of any kind. 



But is this true either in fact or as a legitimate de- 

 duction from what we know of consciousness in the 

 animal world ? 



Some years ago a very great discovery was made and, 

 as is not unusual even with great botanical discoveries, 

 by an Englishman. Mr. Gardiner found that the living 

 protoplasmic cells were not,as had alwaysbeen supposed, 

 separated from one another by dead walls of cellulose, 

 but that tiny minute strands of the same living proto- 



140 



