Personality of plants

CHAPTER XIV
The Higher Life of Plants
"I swear I think now that everything, without ex-
ception, has an immortal soul!
The trees have, rooted in the ground! the weeds
of the sea have! the animals!
I swear I think there is nothing but immortality !"
—Walt Whitman
Maurice Maeterlinck, in one of his delightful
essays, pays a remarkable tribute
to the spiritual powers of plants.
"Though there be plants and flowers that are
awkward or unlovely," he says, "there is none
that is wholly devoid of wisdom and ingenuity.
All exert themselves to accomplish their work,
all have the magnificent ambition to overrun
and conquer the surface of the globe by endlessly
multiplying the form of existence which
they represent. To attain this object, they have,
because of the law which chains them to the
soil, to overcome difficulties much greater than
those opposed to the increase of animals. . . .
If we had applied to the removal of the various
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