actions as not to be able to meet any changes, and these changes do
very often occur, that climate, new conditions of soil, helps or
hindrances to growth and wear, may bring about. That they must adapt
themselves to such changes, or perish in their struggle to exist, none
can question. It is not enough to say that natural selection affords
an explanation of every phenomenon that they may exhibit. There is an
energy within the plant, think and write as we will, and it is this
that comes to its aid and directs the movement that will be productive
of the most good.
Concluding, then, let me aver that no plant can exist or fulfil its
allotted part in the drama of life without the possession of some form
or degree of consciousness. If it be true that life and consciousness
preceded organization, and the statement can hardly be disputed, and
have been the _primum mobile_ in the creation of organic structure,
what reason, seeing that life necessarily persists in vegetable
organism, can be given for their dissociation in existing forms of
plants, as seems to be the tendency of modern scientific thought?
That plants once possessed consciousness, there can be no difference
of opinion. Well, then, what has become of this consciousness? It
could not have been destroyed, for energy or force, and consciousness
certainly must be placed under this category, can never be destroyed.
I repeat the question. What has become of it? Either it exists in the
plant in a dormant condition, awaiting opportunities to call it into
existence, or it has returned to the great Source of all consciousness,
whence each individual organism, whether of plant or animal, obtained
its _quantum_. It still exists, but how or under what conditions,
I cannot affirm, and is to plants what mind is to man and animals,
controlling their actions when such are for their well-being and good.
If mind persists in a future state, then consciousness, which may be
considered as mind in plants, must also persist, for it is not at all
likely that the Source of all consciousness, which we worship as God,
the Creator of all things, could be unmindful of the least of His
children.
MIND IN ANIMALS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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