The Folk-lore of Plants 249 



would sensation be, if the feeling-life of plants were 

 blotted from existence " Fechner goes farther still: 

 he finds consciousness in all things inanimate as well as 

 living; even the planet lives again and is conscious, and 

 in the nineteenth century the goddess Gaia or Terra re- 

 turns again unto her own. Listen then to Fechner as 

 translated by the marvelously open-minded Professor 

 James: 



' ' On a certain spring morning I went out to walk. The 

 fields were green, the birds sang, the smoke was rising 

 and here and there a man appeared ; a light as of trans- 

 figuration lay on all things. It was only a little bit of 

 earth ; it was only one moment of her existence ; and yet 

 as my look embraced her more and more it seemed to me 

 not only so beautiful an idea but so true and clear a 

 fact that she is an angel, an angel so rich and fresh and 

 flower-like and yet going her round in the skies so firmly 

 and so at one with herself, turning her whole living face 

 to heaven and carrying me along with her into that heav- 

 en that" I asked myself how thinking men could ever 

 have deemed the earth a clod! 



Is consciousness then a property of universal matter? 

 Truly when the shaping fancies of our racial morning 

 begin to blend with modern learning and to echo in our 

 most recent university halls, it is time to give some heed at 

 least, to the folk-lore of the plants. But, friends, there 

 is nothing in it : is it at all worth your time and mine ? 



