INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS 



thought, however, is not impenetrable and hostile, but analo- 

 gous and comformable to ours. 



If nature knew everything, if she were never wrong, if, 

 ever5rwhere, in all her undertakings, she showed herself per- 

 fect and infallible at the first onset, if she revealed in all 

 things an intelligence immeasurably superior to our own, then 

 indeed there might be cause to fear and to lose courage. We 

 should feel ourselves the victim and the prey of an extraneous 

 power, which we should have no hope of knowing or meas- 

 uring. It is much better to be convinced that this power, at 

 least from the intellectual point of view, is close akin to our 

 own. Nature's intelligence and ours draw upon the same 

 reserves. We belong to the same world, we are almost equals. 

 We are associating not with inaccessible gods, but with veiled, 

 yet fraternal intentions which it is our business to grasp and 

 to direct. 



30 

 It would not, I imagine, be very rash to maintain that 



there are not creatures more or less intelligent, but a diffused, 



general intelligence, a sort of universal fluid that penetrates 



diversely the organisms which it encounters, according as they 



are good or bad conductors of the understanding. Man, in that 



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