Sense-Life and Sensibility 
“God surely collects into one concert of harmony 
the emotions and sensations of all living creatures, and 
how far apart and separate would be the living instru- 
mentalists if the whole plant world were excluded from 
participation therein. Think of a forest through which 
a roebuck, and that at very rare intervals, sometimes 
passes on its solitary way!” 
There can be but one opinion as to the beauty of these 
ideas, but most botanists, and especially Schrammen, 
may not at first perceive that there is an argument, and 
one of some cogency, underlying their fantastic idealism. 
For it is a fact that protoplasm, in plants and animals 
alike, breathes or respires, works, becomes fatigued, and 
eventually dies. What authority have we for the state- 
ment that consciousness is dependent on the possession 
of a nervous system? Is it not an essential condition 
of protoplasmic life that it can do things of itself and does 
them on purpose ? However, the reader must be referred 
to Fechner’s “Nanna” for further details, in which he 
will find much that is of great interest. 
There is also on this subject a recent work by Maeter- 
linck,* whose attitude can be at once understood from 
the following striking passage :— 
“ | shall never forget the admirable example of heroism 
exhibited by an enormous centenarian laurel, which I 
found the other day in those wild yet charming gorges 
of the river Loup in Provence. One could read with- 
out any difficulty the whole drama of its stubborn and 
difficult life clearly written on every line of its strained 
and almost tortured (pour ainsi dire convulsif) trunk. Some 
bird or perhaps the wind had deposited the seed on a 
bare rock which fell straight downwards below it like 
an iron curtain. The tree was born there 200 yards 
above the torrent bed, inaccessible and solitary amongst 
barren and sun-scorched stones, 
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