MOVEMENTS OF PLANTS 53 



lance between plants and human beings, lest we go 

 astray into anthropomorphism or sentimentality, 

 and sin against the law of parsimony, which forbids 

 us to assume the action of higher causes when lower 

 will suffice. 



The problem is clearly one for treatment by 

 evolutionary method — for instance, by applying 

 the principle of continuity.^ Man is developed 

 from an ovum, and since man has consciousness it 

 is allowable to suppose that the speck of protoplasm 

 from which he develops has a quality which can 

 grow into consciousness, and, by analogy, that other 

 protoplasmic bodies, for instance those found in 

 plants, have at least the ghosts of similar qualities. 

 But the principle of continuity may be used the 

 other way up ; it may be argued that if a lump of 

 protoplasm can perform the essential functions of 

 a living thing, to all appearances without conscious- 

 ness, the supposed value of consciousness in Man 

 is an illusion. This is the doctrine of animal auto- 

 matism so brilliantly treated by Huxley.^ He is 

 chiefly concerned with the value of consciousness to 

 an organism — a question into which I cannot enter. 

 What concerns us now is, that however we use the 

 doctrine of continuity, it gives support to belief in 

 a psychic element in plants. All I contend for at 

 the moment is, that there is nothing unscientific 

 in classing animals and plants together from a psy- 

 chological standpoint. For this contention I may 

 quote a well-known psychologist. Dr. James Ward,* 



1 See James Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, i.^283 

 ^ Science and Culture, Collected Essays, i. 

 " Loc. cit. p. 288. 



