298 . LUCK, OR CUNNING ? 



the best way in which to employ their opportunities 

 that I give to low animals, my argument falls to the 

 ground. If I declare organic modification to be 

 mainly due to function, and hence in the closest 

 correlation with mental change, I must give plants, as 

 well as animals, a mind, and endow them with power 

 to reflect and reason upon all that most concerns 

 them. Many who will feel little difficulty about 

 admitting that animal modification is upon the whole 

 mainly due to the secular cunning of the animals 

 themselves will yet hesitate before they admit that 

 plants also can have a reason and cunning of their 

 own. 



Unwillingness to concede this is based principally 

 upon the error concerning intelligence to which I have 

 already referred — I mean to our regarding intelligence 

 not so much as the power of understanding as that of 

 being understood by ourselves. Once admit that the 

 evidence in favour of a plant's knowing its own busi- 

 ness depends more on the efi&ciency with which that 

 business is conducted than either on our power of 

 understanding how it can be conducted, or on any 

 signs on the plant's part of a capacity for understanding 

 things that do not concern it, and there will be no 

 further difficulty about supposing that in its own sphere 

 a plant is just as intelligent as an animal, and keeps a 

 sharp look-out upon its own interests, however indif- 

 ferent it may seem to be to ours. So strong has been 

 the set of recent opinion in this direction that with 

 botanists the foregoing now almost goes without say- 

 ing, though few five years ago would have accepted it. 



