MOVEMENTS OF PLANTS 51 



the general laws deducible from the movements of 

 animals. Unfortunately, as soon as we attack this 

 question we are liable to enter regions where for the 

 ignorant there are many pitfalls. We are, in fact, 

 face to face with the question whether in plants 

 there is anything in which we may recognise the 

 faint beginnings of consciousness, whether plants 

 have the rudiments of desire or of memory, or other 

 qualities generally described as mental. 



If we take the wide view of memory which has 

 been set forth by S. Butler^ and by Hering, we shall 

 be forced to beUeve that plants, like all other living 

 things, have a kind of memory. For these writers 

 make memory cover the whole phenomena of life. 

 Inheritance with them is a form of memory, or 

 memory a kind of inheritance. A plant or an 

 animal grows into the form inherited from its 

 ancestors by passing through a series of changes, 

 each change being linked to the preceding stage 

 as the notes of a tune are linked together in the 

 nervous system of one who plays the piano. Or 

 we may compare the development of an animal or 

 plant to the firing of a train of gunpowder, which 

 completes itself by a series of explosions, each leading 

 to a new one. To use the language I have been 

 emplojdng, each stage in development acts as a 

 signal to the next. 



In the same way the characteristic element in 

 what is done by memory, or by that "unconscious 

 memory"^ known as habit, is the association of a 



> Lije and Habit. 1878. 

 ' Butler's term. 



