Sinclair says the hornbeam is called “swamp beech” in Vermont. _May 20. Tuesday._ There is, no doubt, a perfect analogy between the life of the human being and that of the vegetable, both of the body and the mind. The botanist Gray says:— “The organs of plants are of two sorts:—1. Those of _Vegetation_, which are concerned in growth,—by which the plant takes in the aërial and earthy matters on which it lives, and elaborates them into the materials of its own organized substance; 2. Those of _Fructification_ or _Reproduction_, which are concerned with the propagation of the species.” So is it with the human being. I am concerned first to come to my _Growth_, intellectually and morally (and physically, of course, as a means to this, for the body is the symbol of the soul), and then to bear my _Fruit_, do my _Work_, _propagate_ my kind, not only physically but _morally_, not only in body but in mind. “The organs of vegetation are the _Root_, _Stem_, and _Leaves_. The _Stem_ is the axis and original basis of the plant.” “The first point of the stem preëxists in the embryo (_i. e._ in the rudimentary plantlet contained within the seed): it is here called the radicle.” Such is the rudiment of mind, already partially developed, more than a bud, but pale, having never been exposed to the light, and slumbering coiled up, packed away in the seed, unfolded [_sic_]. Consider the still pale, rudimentary, infantine, radicle-like thoughts of some students, which who knows what they might expand to, if they should ever come to the light and air, if they do not become rancid and perish in the seed. It is not every seed that will survive a thousand years. Other thoughts further developed, but yet pale and languid, like shoots grown in a cellar. “The plant ... develops from the first in two opposite directions, _viz._ upwards [to expand in the light and air] to produce and continue the stem (or _ascending axis_), and downwards [avoiding the light][169] to form the root (or _descending_ axis). The former is ordinarily or in great part aërial, the latter subterranean.” So the mind develops from the first in two opposite directions: upwards to expand in the light and air; and downwards avoiding the light to form the root. One half is aërial, the other subterranean. The mind is not well balanced and firmly planted, like the oak, which has not as much root as branch, whose roots like those of the white pine are slight and near the surface. One half of the mind’s development must still be root,—in the embryonic state, in the womb of nature, more unborn than at first. For each successive new idea or bud, a new rootlet in the earth. The growing man penetrates yet deeper by his roots into the womb of things. The infant is comparatively near the surface, just covered from the light; but the man sends down a tap-root to the centre of things.