iable either by the eye, or by any other test, between a germ that
will develop into an oak, a vine, a rose, and one that (given its
accustomed surroundings) will become a mouse, an elephant, or a man.

He contended that the course of any germ's development was dictated by
the habits of the germs from which it was descended and of whose identity
it had once formed part. If a germ found itself placed as the germs in
the line of its ancestry were placed, it would do as its ancestors had
done, and grow up into the same kind of organism as theirs. If it found
the circumstances only a little different, it would make shift
(successfully or unsuccessfully) to modify its development accordingly;
if the circumstances were widely different, it would die, probably
without an effort at self-adaptation. This, he argued, applied equally
to the germs of plants and of animals.

He therefore connected all, both animal and vegetable development, with
intelligence, either spent and now unconscious, or still unspent and
conscious; and in support of his view as regards vegetable life, he
pointed to the way in which all plants have adapted themselves to their
habitual environment. Granting that vegetable intelligence at first
sight appears to differ materially from animal, yet, he urged, it is like
it in the one essential fact that though it has evidently busied itself
about matters that are vital to the well-being of the organism that
possesses it, it has never shown the slightest tendency to occupy itself
with anything else. This, he insisted, is as great a proof of
intelligence as any living being can give.

"Plants," said he, "show no sign of interesting themselves in human
affairs. We shall never get a rose to understand that five times seven
are thirty-five, and there is no use in talking to an oak about
fluctuations in the price of stocks. Hence we say that the oak and the
rose are unintelligent, and on finding that they do not understand our
business conclude that they do not understand their own. But what can a
creature who talks in this way know about intelligence? Which shows
greater signs of intelligence? He, or the rose and oak?

"And when we call plants stupid for not understanding our business, how
capable do we show ourselves of understanding theirs? Can we form even
the faintest conception of the way in which a seed from a rose-tree turns
earth, air, warmth and water into a rose full-blown? Where does it get
i