PLANT CONSCIOUSNESS. 



449 



It ia unnecessary to adduce further illustration in proof of plant 

 consciousness, and of the fact that brain-power can, and does, exist apart 

 from a visible brain. When we see the irritability of the Sensitive Plant 

 transmitted from one part to another, exhausted by repeated artificial 

 excitation, and renewed after a period of repose, it is difficult to dissociate 

 it from a conscious organism. Still less can we witness certain organs 

 taking determinate positions and directions, surmounting intervening 

 obstacles, moving spontaneously, or study the manner in which they are 

 affected by stimulants, narcotics, anaesthetics, and poisons, and yet declare 

 these phenomena to be brought about by a power different from that which 

 produces similar actions and effects in animals. Vital activity is the rule, 

 and inertness the exception, in plant-life ; and this fact seems to impress 

 upon us the error of that form of argument which would assume the non- 

 existence of the higher traits of life in plants merely because the machinery 

 is invisible. 



It has already been mentioned that the lowest forms of both animals 

 and plants are individuals whose bodies are merely single cells, and it is, 

 also, worthy of note that the earliest embryonic state of all the higher 

 animals is merely that of a single cell, and the highest powers of the 

 microscope are unable to trace any distinction between the embryos of 

 plants and animals, birds and beasts, fish and fowl, the Mimosa and Man ; 

 all are exactly similar. From an evolutionary point of view, there is 

 nothing in this latter circumstance so very wonderful after all. 



If there were no signs of intelligence in the vegetable kingdom 

 the cause for wonder would be greater. If thought is the product of 

 evolution it must have had its beginnings. For anything we know it may 

 have taken as many thousands of years to evolve the intelligence of the 

 Mimosa as it has that of Man, although of course the latter is an in- 

 calculably greater distance ahead. As Drummond said, "Mimosa can 

 be defined in terms of Man, but Man cannot be defined in terms of 

 Mimosa." 



