MENTALITY AND SPIRITUALITY 191 
returned to their original haunts, reassume their 
natural forms. There must be in the plant some 
prompting sense which makes it realise any unfit- 
ness in its life or being. 
An example of this may be seen by any one who 
will make the experiment. An oxalis, a regular 
“night sleeper,” if subjected to strong light by 
night and darkness by day, at first will open and 
shut irregularly, as if distressed and upset by the 
unnaturalness of its new conditions, then gradu- 
ally will assume its accustomed sleeping and wak- 
ing periods, but regulating them by the darkness 
‘and light. On removing the artificial light and 
allowing the return of natural day and night to the 
flower, it will, after another period of uncertainty, 
return to its old habits of waking and sleeping. 
These periods of uncertainty can be accounted 
for only by accrediting the plant with a sense of 
the fitness of things, a physical sense. But, grant- 
ing such a sense, one comes suggestively near to 
granting to the plant an actual reasoning power. 
Plants, then, have seven senses: sight, hearing, 
feeling, taste, smell, a psychic sense, and a physi- 
cal sense; or six senses and a reasoning power—if 
the physical sense be admitted as such. These 
senses might be termed “passive” mentality: that 
is, senses which, to perform their functions, possi- 
