(77) Timaeus: these being older than the cultivated kinds. For everything, in fact, which partakes of life may justly and with perfect truth be termed a living creature. Certainly that creature which we are now describing partakes of the third kind of soul, which is seated, as we affirm, between the midriff and the navel, and which shares not at all in opinion and reasoning and mind but in sensation, pleasant and painful, together with desires. For inasmuch as it continues wholly passive and does not turn within itself around itself, repelling motion from without

(3) Of all these genera, those [species] which are animal have [many] roots, which stretch from the above below, whereas those which are stationary —these from [one] living root send forth a wood of branching greenery up from below into the upper parts. Moreover, some of them are nourished with a two-fold form of food, while others with a single form. Twain are the forms of food—for soul and body, of which [all] animals consist. Their soul is nourished by the ever-restless motion of the World ; their bodies have their growth from foods [drawn] from the water and the earth of the inferior world. Spirit, with which they all are filled, being interblended with the rest, doth make them live; sense being added, and also reason in the case of man—which hath been given to man alone as a fifth part out of the æther. Of all the living things [God] doth adorn, extend, exalt, the sense of man alone unto the understanding of the Reason of Divinity. But since I am impressed to speak concerning Sense, I will a little further on set forth for you the sermon on this [point]; for that it is most holy, and [most] mighty, not less than in the Reason of Divinity itself. VII

(22) And as regards vegetal forms? Are we to imagine beneath the leading principle some sort of corporeal echo of it, something that would be tendency or desire in us and is growth in them? Or are we to think that, while the earth contains the principle of desire by virtue of containing soul, the vegetal realm possesses only this latter reflection of desire?

The first point to be decided is what soul is present in the earth.

Is it one coming from the sphere of the All, a radiation upon earth from that which Plato seems to represent as the only thing possessing soul primarily? Or are we to go by that other passage where he describes earth as the first and oldest of all the gods within the scope of the heavens, and assigns to it, as to the other stars, a soul peculiar to itself?

It is difficult to see how earth could be a god if it did not possess a soul thus distinct: but the whole matter is obscure since Plato's statements increase or at least do not lessen the perplexity. It is best to begin by facing the question as a matter of reasoned investigation.

That earth possesses the vegetal soul may be taken as certain from the vegetation upon it. But we see also that it produces animals; why then should we not argue that it is itself animated? And, animated, no small part of the All, must it not be plausible to assert that it possesses an Intellectual-Principle by which it holds its rank as a god? If this is true of every one of the stars, why should it not be so of the earth, a living part of the living All? We cannot think of it as sustained from without by an alien soul and incapable of containing one appropriate to itself.

Why should those fiery globes be receptive of soul, and the earthly globe not? The stars are equally corporeal, and they lack the flesh, blood, muscle, and pliant material of earth, which, besides, is of more varied content and includes every form of body. If the earth's immobility is urged in objection, the answer is that this refers only to spatial movement.

But how can perception and sensation be supposed to occur in the earth?

How do they occur in the stars? Feeling does not belong to fleshy matter: soul to have perception does not require body; body, on the contrary, requires soul to maintain its being and its efficiency, judgement belongs to the soul which overlooks the body, and, from what is experienced there, forms its decisions.

But, we will be asked to say what are the experiences, within the earth, upon which the earth-soul is thus to form its decisions: certainly vegetal forms, in so far as they belong to earth have no sensation or perception: in what then, and through what, does such sensation take place, for sensation without organs is too rash a notion. Besides, what would this sense-perception profit the soul? It could not be necessary to knowledge: surely the consciousness of wisdom suffices to beings which have nothing to gain from sensation?

This argument is not to be accepted: it ignores the consideration that, apart from all question of practical utility, objects of sense provide occasion for a knowing which brings pleasure: thus we ourselves take delight in looking upon sun, stars, sky, landscape, for their own sake. But we will deal with this point later: for the present we ask whether the earth has perceptions and sensations, and if so through what vital members these would take place and by what method: this requires us to examine certain difficulties, and above all to decide whether earth could have sensation without organs, and whether this would be directed to some necessary purpose even when incidentally it might bring other results as well.

(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.

(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.

(22) The manifestation of Trophoses, or acts pertaining to nutrition, is apparent even in the case of the lowest forms of plant-life. Even the lowliest vegetable cell takes nourishment and replaces the waste products of its system by fresh material taken into its system. These activities require a very simple nervous system, often practically no nervous system at all. But, nevertheless, in every act of nutrition there is manifested not only the presence of Life, but also conscious activity of a certain degree. Even the lowest forms of plants are able to distinguish perfectly between nutritive and non-nutritive particles of matter. Most plants possess no nervous system, at least none yet discovered by science, but, nevertheless, they manifest characteristic Trophoses corresponding in degree with their necessities , but seldom exceeding those necessities.

(32) IV. The Plane of the Animals Here, once more, we discover that there is no fixed dividing line between the adjoining Planes of Consciousness. Just as the Mineral Consciousness is closely blended into the Plant Consciousness, as we have seen, so is the Plant Consciousness closely blended into the Animal Consciousness. In fact, in the lowly forms of animal life it is almost impossible, at times, to state positively whether the particular form under consideration is a plant or an animal. Forms which science formerly considered "animal" are not placed in the category of "plant-life;" and other forms which science once held to belong to the plant-kingdom are now placed in the category of animal-life. The occultist recognized that these disputed forms dwell in the region in which the two respective planes blend and intermingle as has been stated before in these pages.

(11) The very heavens, patently multiple, cannot be thought to disdain any form of life since this universe holds everything. Now how do these things come to be here? Does the higher realm contain all of the lower?

All that has been shaped by Reason-Principle and conforms to Idea.

But, having fire and water, it will certainly have vegetation; how does vegetation exist There? Earth, too? either these are alive or they are There as dead things and then not everything There has life. How in sum can the things of this realm be also There?

Vegetal life we can well admit, for the plant is a Reason-Principle established in life. If in the plant the Reason-Principle, entering Matter and constituting the plant, is a certain form of life, a definite soul, then, since every Reason-Principle is a unity, then either this of plant-life is the primal or before it there is a primal plant, source of its being: that first plant would be a unity; those here, being multiple, must derive from a unity. This being so, that primal must have much the truer life and be the veritable plant, the plants here deriving from it in the secondary and tertiary degree and living by a vestige of its life.

But earth; how is there earth There: what is the being of earth and how are we to represent to ourselves the living earth of that realm?

First, what is it, what the mode of its being?

Earth, here and There alike, must possess shape and a Reason-Principle. Now in the case of the vegetal, the Reason-Principle of the plant here was found to be living in that higher realm: is there such a Reason-Principle in our earth?

Take the most earthy of things found shaped in earth and they exhibit, even they, the indwelling earth-principle. The growing and shaping of stones, the internal moulding of mountains as they rise, reveal the working of an ensouled Reason-Principle fashioning them from within and bringing them to that shape: this, we must take it, is the creative earth-principle corresponding to what we call the specific principle of a tree; what we know as earth is like the wood of the tree; to cut out a stone is like lopping a twig from a tree, except of course that there is no hurt done, the stone remaining a member of the earth as the twig, uncut, of the tree.

Realizing thus that the creative force inherent in our earth is life within a Reason-Principle, we are easily convinced that the earth There is much more primally alive, that it is a reasoned Earth-Livingness, the earth of Real-Being, earth primally, the source of ours.

Fire, similarly, with other such things, must be a Reason-Principle established in Matter: fire certainly does not originate in the friction to which it may be traced; the friction merely brings out a fire already existent in the scheme and contained in the materials rubbed together. Matter does not in its own character possess this fire-power: the true cause is something informing the Matter, that is to say, a Reason-Principle, obviously therefore a soul having the power of bringing fire into being; that is, a life and a Reason-Principle in one.

It is with this in mind that Plato says there is soul in everything of this sphere. That soul is the cause of the fire of the sense-world; the cause of fire here is a certain Life of fiery character, the more authentic fire. That transcendent fire being more truly fire will be more veritably alive; the fire absolute possesses life. And the same principles apply to the other elements, water and air.

Why, then, are water and air not ensouled as earth is?

Now, it is quite certain that these are equally within the living total, parts of the living all; life does not appear visibly in them; but neither does it in the case of the earth where its presence is inferred by what earth produces: but there are living things in fire and still more manifestly in water and there are systems of life in the air. The particular fire, rising only to be quenched, eludes the soul animating the universe; it slips away from the magnitude which would manifest the soul within it; so with air and water. If these Kinds could somehow be fastened down to magnitude they would exhibit the soul within them, now concealed by the fact that their function requires them to be loose or flowing. It is much as in the case of the fluids within ourselves; the flesh and all that is formed out of the blood into flesh show the soul within, but the blood itself, not bringing us any sensation, seems not to have soul; yet it must; the blood is not subject to blind force; its nature obliges it to abstain from the soul which nonetheless is indwelling in it. This must be the case with the three elements; it is the fact that the living beings formed from the close conglomeration of air are not susceptible to suffering. But just as air, so long as it remains itself, eludes the light which is and remains unyielding, so too, by the effect of its circular movement, it eludes soul- and, in another sense, does not. And so with fire and water.

(15) III. The Plant Soul By the term "The Plant Soul," the Rosicrucians seek to indicate the Soul embodied in the Vegetable Cellular Substance of which a very large proportion of the human physical body is composed. Apart from advanced scientists and advanced occultists, few realize how great proportion of the processes of the human and animal body is really vegetable in nature. The growth of bodily tissue, of parts and organs, is distinctively vegetable in character.

(2) Those that deny the happy life to the plants on the ground that they lack sensation are really denying it to all living things.

By sensation can be meant only perception of state, and the state of well-being must be Good in itself quite apart from the perception: to be a part of the natural plan is good whether knowingly or without knowledge: there is good in the appropriate state even though there be no recognition of its fitness or desirable quality- for it must be in itself desirable.

This Good exists, then; is present: that in which it is present has well-being without more ado: what need then to ask for sensation into the bargain?

Perhaps, however, the theory is that the good of any state consists not in the condition itself but in the knowledge and perception of it.

But at this rate the Good is nothing but the mere sensation, the bare activity of the sentient life. And so it will be possessed by all that feel, no matter what. Perhaps it will be said that two constituents are needed to make up the Good, that there must be both feeling and a given state felt: but how can it be maintained that the bringing together of two neutrals can produce the Good?

They will explain, possibly, that the state must be a state of Good and that such a condition constitutes well-being on the discernment of that present good; but then they invite the question whether the well-being comes by discerning the presence of the Good that is there, or whether there must further be the double recognition that the state is agreeable and that the agreeable state constitutes the Good.

If well-being demands this recognition, it depends no longer upon sensation but upon another, a higher faculty; and well-being is vested not in a faculty receptive of pleasure but in one competent to discern that pleasure is the Good.

Then the cause of the well-being is no longer pleasure but the faculty competent to pronounce as to pleasure's value. Now a judging entity is nobler than one that merely accepts a state: it is a principle of Reason or of Intellection: pleasure is a state: the reasonless can never be closer to the Good than reason is. How can reason abdicate and declare nearer to good than itself something lying in a contrary order?

No: those denying the good of life to the vegetable world, and those that make it consist in some precise quality of sensation, are in reality seeking a loftier well-being than they are aware of, and setting their highest in a more luminous phase of life.

Perhaps, then, those are in the right who found happiness not on the bare living or even on sensitive life but on the life of Reason?

But they must tell us it should be thus restricted and why precisely they make Reason an essential to the happiness in a living being:

"When you insist on Reason, is it because Reason is resourceful, swift to discern and compass the primal needs of nature; or would you demand it, even though it were powerless in that domain?"

If you call it in as a provider, then the reasonless, equally with the reasoning, may possess happiness after their kind, as long as, without any thought of theirs, nature supplies their wants: Reason becomes a servant; there is no longer any worth in it for itself and no worth in that consummation of reason which, we hold, is virtue.

If you say that reason is to be cherished for its own sake and not as supplying these human needs, you must tell us what other services it renders, what is its proper nature and what makes it the perfect thing it is.

For, on this admission, its perfection cannot reside in any such planning and providing: its perfection will be something quite different, something of quite another class: Reason cannot be itself one of those first needs of nature; it cannot even be a cause of those first needs of nature or at all belong to that order: it must be nobler than any and all of such things: otherwise it is not easy to see how we can be asked to rate it so highly.

Until these people light upon some nobler principle than any at which they still halt, they must be left where they are and where they choose to be, never understanding what the Good of Life is to those that can make it theirs, never knowing to what kind of beings it is accessible.

What then is happiness? Let us try basing it upon Life.

(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.

(6) It was formerly the teachings of science that the Universe was composed of two great classes of Things, as follows: (1) Living Things, and (2) Lifeless Things. In the first class were placed all human and animal life, at least during their term of vital existence; plants were afterward added, though somewhat grudgingly, by science. In the second class, all Things below the plane of animal or plant life were placed; it being taught that minerals, chemical elements, etc., were utterly lifeless. Any who ventured to question this accepted classification were deemed of unsound mind, and unworthy of serious consideration.

(2) To resume: there is from the first principle to ultimate an outgoing in which unfailingly each principle retains its own seat while its offshoot takes another rank, a lower, though on the other hand every being is in identity with its prior as long as it holds that contact.

In the case of soul entering some vegetal form, what is there is one phase, the more rebellious and less intellectual, outgone to that extreme; in a soul entering an animal, the faculty of sensation has been dominant and brought it there; in soul entering man, the movement outward has either been wholly of its reasoning part or has come from the Intellectual-Principle in the sense that the soul, possessing that principle as immanent to its being, has an inborn desire of intellectual activity and of movement in general.

But, looking more minutely into the matter, when shoots or topmost boughs are lopped from some growing thing, where goes the soul that was present in them? Simply, whence it came: soul never knew spatial separation and therefore is always within the source. If you cut the root to pieces, or burn it, where is the life that was present there? In the soul, which never went outside of itself.

No doubt, despite this permanence, the soul must have been in something if it reascends; and if it does not, it is still somewhere; it is in some other vegetal soul: but all this means merely that it is not crushed into some one spot; if a Soul-power reascends, it is within the Soul-power preceding it; that in turn can be only in the soul-power prior again, the phase reaching upwards to the Intellectual-Principle. Of course nothing here must be understood spatially: Soul never was in space; and the Divine Intellect, again, is distinguished from soul as being still more free.

Soul thus is nowhere but in the Principle which has that characteristic existence at once nowhere and everywhere.

If the soul on its upward path has halted midway before wholly achieving the supreme heights, it has a mid-rank life and has centred itself upon the mid-phase of its being. All in that mid-region is Intellectual-Principle not wholly itself- nothing else because deriving thence , yet not that because the Intellectual-Principle in giving it forth is not merged into it.

There exists, thus, a life, as it were, of huge extension, a total in which each several part differs from its next, all making a self-continuous whole under a law of discrimination by which the various forms of things arise with no effacement of any prior in its secondary.

But does this Soul-phase in the vegetal order, produce nothing?

It engenders precisely the Kind in which it is thus present: how, is a question to be handled from another starting-point.

(27) If the earth transmits the generative soul to growing things- or retains it while allowing a vestige of it to constitute the vegetal principle in them- at once the earth is ensouled, as our flesh is, and any generative power possessed by the plant world is of its bestowing: this phase of the soul is immanent in the body of the growing thing, and transmits to it that better element by which it differs from the broken off part no longer a thing of growth but a mere lump of material.

But does the entire body of the earth similarly receive anything from the soul?

Yes: for we must recognize that earthly material broken off from the main body differs from the same remaining continuously attached; thus stones increase as long as they are embedded, and, from the moment they are separated, stop at the size attained.

We must conclude, then, that every part and member of the earth carries its vestige of this principle of growth, an under-phase of that entire principle which belongs not to this or that member but to the earth as a whole: next in order is the nature , concerned with sensation, this not interfused but in contact from above: then the higher soul and the Intellectual-Principle, constituting together the being known as Hestia and Demeter - a nomenclature indicating the human intuition of these truths, asserted in the attribution of a divine name and nature.

(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.

(18) At the lower pole of this plane we find plant-life which is scarcely distinguishable from the higher forms of mineral life—in fact, as we have seen previously, it is almost impossible to draw a fixed line separating the two great plane-divisions, for all planes blend into each other and are linked one with the other on the lower and higher poles of their activity. We have mentioned the Diatoms, or "living crystals" which the best authorities regard as the "missing link" between the two great kingdoms of Life and Consciousness, but which really are plants rather than minerals. The Diatoms belong to an order of flowerless plants, a genus of the Algols. They are covered by a siliceous covering which gives them a crystalline appearance. They present the appearance of crystalline fragmentary particles, generally bounded by right lines, flat, stiff and brittle, usually nestling in slime in which they unite into various forms and combinations, and from which they often again separate. They multiply and reproduce themselves by division and conjugation.

(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.

(19) IV. The Animal Soul By the term "The Animal Soul," the Rosicrucians seek to indicate the Soul embodied in the Animal Organic Substance, both in the lower animals and in man. The Animal Soul is the animating spirit, or vital spirit, manifesting in the many activities of animal life, high and low. Its intelligence and consciousness are very high in comparison to those of the Vegetable Soul, but is limited to the requirements and needs of the purely animal life. In its lower manifestations it is but little if any higher than that of the higher manifestations of the Plant Life, and in its highest manifestations it is but little if any lower than that of the lowest manifestations of the Human Soul. In fact, as we have repeatedly said in this book, the various Planes of Consciousness (and hence the powers and limits of the several Souls) blend into those on each side of them, and with which they are linked.

(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.

(1) Are we to make True Happiness one and the same thing with Welfare or Prosperity and therefore within the reach of the other living beings as well as ourselves?

There is certainly no reason to deny well-being to any of them as long as their lot allows them to flourish unhindered after their kind.

Whether we make Welfare consist in pleasant conditions of life, or in the accomplishment of some appropriate task, by either account it may fall to them as to us. For certainly they may at once be pleasantly placed and engaged about some function that lies in their nature: take for an instance such living beings as have the gift of music; finding themselves well-off in other ways, they sing, too, as their nature is, and so their day is pleasant to them.

And if, even, we set Happiness in some ultimate Term pursued by inborn tendency, then on this head, too, we must allow it to animals from the moment of their attaining this Ultimate: the nature in them comes to a halt, having fulfilled its vital course from a beginning to an end.

It may be a distasteful notion, this bringing-down of happiness so low as to the animal world- making it over, as then we must, even to the vilest of them and not withholding it even from the plants, living they too and having a life unfolding to a Term.

But, to begin with, it is surely unsound to deny that good of life to animals only because they do not appear to man to be of great account. And as for plants, we need not necessarily allow to them what we accord to the other forms of life, since they have no feeling. It is true people might be found to declare prosperity possible to the very plants: they have life, and life may bring good or evil; the plants may thrive or wither, bear or be barren.

No: if Pleasure be the Term, if here be the good of life, it is impossible to deny the good of life to any order of living things; if the Term be inner-peace, equally impossible; impossible, too, if the good of life be to live in accordance with the purpose of nature.