(25) Such appears to be the history of the entire vegetable kingdom." Dr. J. C. Arthur, in his interesting work entitled "The Sagacity and Morality of Plants," says: "I have tried to show that all organisms, even to the very simplest, whether plant or animal, from the very nature of life and the struggle for its maintenance, must be endowed with conscious feeling, pleasure and pain being its simplest expression. I have been told in Java, as one walks through a tangle of sensitive plants, they will drop down in their deprecating way for yards on either side, as if suddenly aroused into life, only to be again transformed into lifeless sticks by some unseen power. * * * The physical basis of life, Protoplasm, is the same for plants as for animals. The first differentiated or modified form of this we meet is the curious animalcule called Amoeba. As we watch its movements we cannot refrain from ascribing to it some dim consciousness of the life it leads. But amoeboid structure is common even in the lowest kinds of plants, and amoeboid movements can be seen in some of its tissues. Witness also the habits and intelligent movements of the zoospores of sea-weed and many other Algae, and the locomotion of the antherozoa of mosses, ferns, etc. Not many years ago these objects were classed as animals, and nobody doubted these so-called animals behaved consciously and intelligently. * * * Nothing can be more marked than the likes and dislikes of plants. Human beings can hardly express the same feelings more decidedly. There is perhaps even a 'messmateship' among plants, which inclines species to prefer to grow in company. Hosts of common plants perform actions which, if they were done by human beings, would at once be brought into the category of right and wrong. There is hardly a virtue or a vice which has not its counterpart in the actions of the vegetable kingdom . As regards conduct in this respect, there is small difference between the lower animals and plants." One of the most elementary manifestations of consciousness , and conscious action, in plant life is what has been called "the gravity sense," or the sense by which the plant recognizes the "up and down" direction of growth. The germinating seed always sends its roots downward, no matter how the seed may be placed in the ground. This cannot be held to result merely from the action of gravitation, for the sprouts move upward and away from the centre of gravity just as truly as the roots move downward and toward it. Experiments have proven that this "sense of direction" is as much a true sense as that of any of the special senses of the lowly animal life-forms. The experiment has been tried of turning around a sprouting seed, the result being that in a day or so the roots will be again found to be turning downward and the sprouts turning upward. A French botanist, named Duhamel, once placed some beans in a cylinder filled with moist earth. After they had begun to sprout, he turned the cylinder a little to one side. The next day he turned it a little further in the same direction. Each day he would turn it a little more, until finally it had described several full circles. Then he took out the plant, and shaking off the clinging earth, he found that the beans’ roots and sprouts had described circles—two perfectly formed spirals being shown, one of the tiny roots and the other of the tiny sprouts. The roots in their constant endeavor to move downward had formed one perfect spiral, while the sprouts in the constant effort to rise upward had described another perfect spiral. No amount of effort will cause the roots of a plant to grow upward, or its sprouts to grow downward. Each, root and sprout, has its own "sense of direction" to which it faithfully and invariably responds. In the same way, and from a similar cause, the tendrils of climbing plants will faithfully move toward the nearby support, and if they are untwined they will return during the next night to the old support, if possible. Moving pictures, carefully prepared, and taken over a long period, show that the movements of these tendrils to be akin to the movements of the limbs of an animal—the feelers and graspers of the octopus for example.

(18) But now is it written here, God sprach (said), Let the earth bring forth grass, and herbs, and fruitful trees. Observe here:

(19) The concept that all life originates from seeds caused grain and various plants to be accepted as emblematic of the human spermatozoon, and the tree was therefore symbolic of organized life unfolding from its primitive germ. The growth of the universe from its primitive seed may be likened to the growth of the mighty oak from the tiny acorn. While the tree is apparently much greater than its own source, nevertheless that source contains potentially every branch, twig, and leaf which will later be objectively unfolded by the processes of growth.

(4) Now, on the man who proposes the question denying that plants are animals, we shall show that he affirms what contradicts himself. For, having defined the animal by the fact of its nourishment and growth, but having asserted that a plant is not an animal, it appears that he says nothing else than that what is nourished and grows is both an animal and not an animal.

(47) For in the divine pomp go forth likewise all manner of sprouting and vegetation of trees, plants and all manner of fruit; and every one bears its own fruit, yet not in an earthly quality and kind, but in a divine quality, form and kind.

(16) The first forms of real plant life are described by the old teachers as having been a now-extinct lowly form of plant-life scarcely more than a crystal in appearance, and yet manifesting the characteristics of plant life. Then appeared the ancestors of what are now known as the "chlomacea" which are a strange group of lowly creatures, comprising the characteristics of both plant and mineral life, and being found even today in the deposits upon damp rocks, the bark of trees, etc. From this and simpler creatures evolved the ancestors of what are now known as the "angiospores," or lowest forms of plant-life; and later, the ancestors of the "gymnospores," which are probably the lowest forms of animal-life known to science today.

(42) During the Middle Ages, mandrake charms brought great prices and an art was evolved by which the resemblance between the mandragora root and the human body was considerably accentuated. Like most superstitions, the belief in the peculiar powers of the mandrake was founded upon an ancient secret doctrine concerning the true nature of the plant. "It is slightly narcotic," says Eliphas Levi, "and an aphrodisiacal virtue was ascribed to it by the ancients, who represented it as being sought by Thessalian sorcerers for the composition of philtres. Is this root the umbilical vestige of our terrestrial origin, as a certain magical mysticism has suggested? We dare not affirm it seriously, but it is true all the same that man issued from the slime of earth and his first appearance must have been in the form of a rough sketch. The analogies of Nature compel us to admit the notion, at least as a possibility. The first men were, in this case, a family of gigantic, sensitive mandrogores, animated by the sun, who rooted themselves up from the earth." (See Transcendental Magic.)

(13) And he saw. and behold, the land was very wide and good, and everything grew thereon — vines and figs and pomegranates, oaks and ilexes, and terebinths and oil trees, and cedars and cypresses and date trees, and all trees of the field, and there was water on the mountains.

(7) Out of the earth sprang up grass, herbs and trees; and in the earth, silver, gold, and all manner of ores came to be; and in the deep above the earth sprang up the wonderful forming of power and virtue.

(7) And behold, ye will go and build for yourselves cities, and plant in them all the plants that are upon the earth, and moreover all fruit-bearing trees.

(20) That Life is present in plant-life scarcely anyone is disposed to question, though there seems to be a desire to deny Consciousness and intelligent activity in the case on the part of the orthodox scientist. But the more advanced of the workers in the ranks of modern science do not hesitate to positively assert the presence of conscious intelligent activity in plant-life, and vigorously support their contention by logical argument backed up by incontrovertible facts gleaned in their laboratory experiments. These scientists hold that the presence of the phenomena of nutrition, reproduction, and of physical and chemical change due to adaptation is proof positive of the presence of vital intelligence within the organism in which the former are manifested.

(81) Thus is the true springing or vegetation in nature, be it in man, beast, wood, herbs or stones. Now observe the End of Nature in this World.

(16) The Plane of Plant Mind, in its seven sub-divisions, comprises the states or conditions of the entities comprising the kingdoms of the Plant World, the vital and mental phenomena of which is fairly well understood by the average intelligent person, many new and interesting scientific works regarding "Mind and Life in Plants" having been published during the last decade. Plants have life, mind and "souls," as well as have the animals, man, and super-man.

(24) Still higher in the scale we find certain species of plants manifesting true Psychoses, or acts pertaining to thought processes , although the latter are of a comparatively low order as compared to those manifested by the higher forms of animal life. With this class of manifestation the average student is not so well informed, and, therefore, it has been thought well to direct your attention in the following pages to these fascinating phenomena of plant-life. We think that a careful consideration of the facts now about to be presented to the student will bring to him a clear realization of the presence of actual conscious activity in the kingdom of the plants, and will cause him to accept the statement of that eminent authority, Professor Bieser, who has said: "While we believe that the intelligence of man, animals and plants is essentially the same in kind, we know that it differs enormously in degree and form. Even among men this degree of intelligence varies, but this is because some individuals by nature see but a little more clearly their needs than others, and live under more favorable circumstances—that is all!" Dr. J. E. Taylor, an authority on the subject of plant-psychology says: "Perhaps one reason why plants are usually denied consciousness and intelligence is because in the structure of even the highest developed species we find no specialized nervous track along which sensations may travel, or where they can be registered as in the case of the ganglia and brains of the higher animals. But it should be remembered that none of the creatures sub-kingdom of the Protozoa (the lowest of the grand divisions of the animal kingdom) possess nervous structures, whilst many of the next more highly organized animal sub-kingdom, the Coelenterata, have no trace, and the rest but a feeble development. Yet we do not deny these lowly organized animals a dim and diffused consciousness, or even the possibility of their structures being so modified that they can profit by experience, and thus develop that accumulated experience of their kind that we call 'instinct.'" Darwin, speaking of the wonderful sensitiveness of the root-tip of plants says: "It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the tip of the radicle thus endowed, and having the power of directing the movements of the adjoining parts, acts like the brain of one of the lower animals ; the brain being seated within the anterior end of the body, receiving impressions from the sense organs, and directing the general movements." Professor Cope says: "We can understand how by parasitism, or other means of getting a livelihood without exertion, the adoption of new and skillful movements would become unnecessary, and consciousness itself would be seldom aroused. Continued repose would be followed by subconsciousness, and later by unconsciousness.

(17) The chief distinction between the intelligence and consciousness of Plants and Animals is that the former manifest almost entirely along the lines of instinctive or unconscious mentation, while the latter manifest in a steadily increasing degree purpositive and deliberate conscious activity. In the processes of the human body we find a large proportion of those performed clearly along the lines of the instinctive, unconscious vegetable kingdom. These processes come under the control and direction of the Plant Soul. They are performed on the Plane of Plant Consciousness just as truly as are the processes of the ordinary types of plant life. Some of these processes are very complex—but so are the processes involved in the life of the ordinary plant.

(2) "Creator of grain and plants," "who caused [the green herb to spring up]!"

(7) Some seed fell on stony ground where it had not much earth: and immediately it sprang up, because it had not much deepness of earth:

(59) O, dear man, view thyself for a while in this looking-glass; thou wilt find it more largely to be read of concerning the creation of man. This I set down here for this very cause, that thou mightest the better understand the power of creation, and that thou mightest the better conceive and fit thyself for this spirit, and so learn to understand its language. The open Gate of the Earth. Now it might be asked, From or out of what matter or power and virtue, then, did the grass, herbs and trees spring forth? What manner of substance or condition or constitution has this kind of creature? Answer.

(37) and fruits. In support of this viewpoint they describe the "gardens of Adonis, " which were small baskets of earth in which seeds were planted and nurtured for a period of eight days. When those plants prematurely died for lack of sufficient earth, they were considered emblematic of the murdered Adonis and were usually cast into the sea with images of the god.

(75) But when the heat of the sun shineth upon the earth, then there spring and grow in the earth all manner of images or figures of ores or minerals, herbs, roots and worms, and all whatsoever is therein. Understand this aright.