Personality of plants

THE HIGHER LIFE OF PLANTS
vicissitudes which crush us, such as pain, old
age, and death, one-half the energy displayed
by any little flower in our gardens, we may well
believe that our lot would be very different
from what it is."
No truer thought was ever set on paper.
Though man prides himself upon his imagined
superiority to non-human creation, and even
denies the capacity for the higher things of life
to animals and plants, he, in reality, nearly al-
ways shows himself vastly inferior to them in
actual applications of mcwal and spiritual
principles.
Have the plants souls and spirits? No man
who has carefully and conscientiously studied
them can wholly deny it. They exhibit a pluck,
a determination, a moral perseverance which
awaken all our admiration. Where we are weak,
they are strong. Where men would lie down
and die, they go steadily forward. When a plant
perishes in the struggle for existence, it is be-
cause the odds have been too great. To make the
most of heredity and environment is an axiom-
atic rule in plantdom.
Man's mind has developed at the expense of
[205]