488 Life and Immortality. 
ideas to the lower animals, there is evidence that they possess 
a spirit which is able to communicate with the spirit of man. 
When a man gives an order to his dog, and is obeyed, there 
is proof that both possess spirits, similar in quality, though 
differing in degree. We know that to give an order to a 
plant would be useless and absurd, because the plant has not 
the spirit that can respond to the spirit of the man in the 
same manner that a dog’s or a horse’s spirit can, but the 
inability so to respond does not prove that the plant is 
devoid ofa spirit. That the spirit of the plant does respond 
to the spirit of the man, when it adapts itself to the condi- 
tions which the spirit of the man has imposed upon it, there 
can be no question, or the many hundred plants which have 
been reclaimed from a state of wildness by a judicious and 
careful management upon the part of man would have been 
among the impossibilities of modern civilization. The spirit 
of man must have entered into the spirit of the plant, and held 
communion therewith, or the world to-day would not have 
been blessed with its manifold cereals, fruits and vegetables, 
all of which have been rendered possible for use by the spirit 
of man entering into an understanding with the nature, wants 
and peculiar dispositions of the plants about him. No less are 
plants living exponents of Divine Ideas than worms, insects, 
beasts and men are, and as such living exponents, they are as 
much needed in the future existence, at least such as are fitted 
to continue in the spirit-world the work begun in the world of 
matter, as are the higher forms ofanimal beings. As plants goa 
great ways towards making this earth-life a paradise of beauty 
and delight, and have ever been associated through the ages 
with animal life, each of the two great kingdoms of life from 
simple beginnings attaining to higher and still higher devel- 
opment up to the present period—the Era of Mind—it cannot 
be possible that the two will have become suddenly divorced 
when the temporal or earth-life is about to pass into the 
eternal or spirit-life. Heaven would not be Heaven without 
the plants that we have cultured, and tended, and admired. 
