y be
used the other way up; it may be argued that if a lump of protoplasm can
perform the essential functions of a living thing, to all appearances
without consciousness, the supposed value of consciousness in Man is an
illusion. This is the doctrine of animal automatism so brilliantly
treated by Huxley. {53b} He is chiefly concerned with the value of
consciousness to an organism--a question into which I cannot enter. What
concerns us now is, that however we use the doctrine of continuity, it
gives support to belief in a psychic element in plants. All I contend
for at the moment is, that there is nothing unscientific in classing
animals and plants together from a psychological standpoint. For this
contention I may quote a well-known psychologist, Dr. James Ward, {53c}
who concludes that mind "is always implicated in life." He remarks, too
(_ibid._ p. 287): "It would be hardly going too far to say that
Aristotle's conception of a plant-soul . . . is tenable even to-day, at
least as tenable as any such notion can be at a time when souls are out
of fashion."

This is a path of inquiry I am quite incapable of pursuing. It would be
safer for me to rest contented with asserting that plants are vegetable
automata, as some philosophers are content to make an automaton of Man.
But I am not satisfied with this resting-place. And I hope that other
biologists will not be satisfied with a point of view in which
consciousness is no more than a bye-product of automatic action, and that
they will in time gain a definite conception of the value of
consciousness in the economy of living organisms. Nor can I doubt that
the facts discussed in these pages must contribute to the foundation of
this wider psychological outlook.

IV
A LANE IN THE COTSWOLDS

Early in May I walked up from the valley to the extreme rim of the
Cotswolds, just above our house. The lower country is all pasture, where
we can wander at will, and delight in the many beautiful trees: the fresh
green elms, the vernal yellow of the oak (which lingers in varying
degrees behind some of its companions, but does not deserve Tolstoy's
epithet 'maussade'), and the grey anatomy of the timid ash, whose black
buds are still getting up their courage. We do not owe the trees in the
meadows to landowners with a taste for natural beauty, but to the cattle
that must have shade.

The buttercups are beginning their golden show, and there is not much
else to decora