'////: Rl-V. JAMBS MMtTlNKAU. 



1 have glanced al inorganic nature at the sea, and the 

 sun, ami tin- vapor, and llir MI.. \\-ilakr. and at 01 

 nature as represented by the fern and the <ak. '1'liat .-aim- 

 sun which warmed the \\at--r and liberated the \apor, 

 ubtler power mi the nutriinenl of the tire. It 

 takes hold of matter wholly unlit for the purpose of nutri- 

 tion, separates its nutritiu- from its non-nutritive portions, 

 t lie former to the vegetable, and carries the others 

 away. Planted in the earth, bathed by the air, and tended 

 by the sun, the tree is traversed by its sap. the cells are 

 formed, the \\oody liber is spun, and the whole is w<>\rn 

 to a texture wonderful e\eii to the naked eye, hut a million- 

 fold more so to microscopic vi.-ion. |)es consciousness 

 mix in any way with thc.-e pi No man can tell. 



Our only ground for a negative conclusion is the absence 

 of those outward manifestations from which feeling is usu- 

 ally inferred. But even these are not entirely absent. In 

 the greenhouses of Kew we may see that a leaf can close, 

 -ponse to a proper stimulus, as promptly as the human 

 fingers themselves; and while there Dr. Hooker will tell us 

 of the wondrous fly-catching and ily-devouring power of 

 the Diona a. No man can say that the feelings of the 

 animal are not represented by a drowsier consciousness in 

 the vegetable world. At all events, no line has ever been 

 drawn between the conscious and the unconscious; for the 

 .ible shades into the animal by such tine gradations, 

 that is impossible to say where the one ends and the other 

 begins. 



In all such inquiries we are necessarily limited by our 

 own power.-: \\ e observe what our senses, armed with the 

 furnished by science, enable us to observe; nothing 

 more. The evidences as to con.-ciou>nes8 in the vegetable 

 world depend wholly upon our capacity to observe and 

 them. Alter the capacity, and the evidence would 

 alter too. Would that which to us is a total absence of any 

 manifestation of consciousness be the same to a being with 

 our capacities indefinitely mult iplied ? To such a being 1 

 can imagine not only the vegetable, but the mineral \\ 

 reapon.-m- to the pn>p t -r irritants, the response differing 



Tli.-ir boaKted BUeeefwinn from tin- i-arlv < 'Imrdi n-n<l-rs tlirm tin- 

 offspring of a "materialism " more " brutal " than any ever 

 - me. 



