Vegetative soul

“ But the same superstition was connected with ordinary trees and wells. Glancing back over the history of civilisation, we reach a period, when vegetation was endowed with personality. As plants manifested the phenomena of life and death like man and the lower animals, they had a similar kind of existence attributed to them. Among some savages to-day, the fragrance of a flower is thought to be its soul. As there was thus no hard and fast line between man and the vegetable kingdom, the one could be derived from the other; in other words, men could have trees as their ancestors. ”

“ Gardens run to seed, and ill weeds grow apace. The fair things are crowded out, and the weed reigns everywhere. It is ever so with my soul. If I neglect it, the flowers of holy desire and devotion will be choked by weeds of worldliness. God will be crowded out, and the garden of the soul will become a wilderness of neglect and sin. ”

“ But no animal except man digs and plants and cultivates the flower and fruit and vegetable that nourish his body and soul. It is something that must date back to creation, for in the deepest winter, when the ground is petrified and the skies are low and gray, the very thought of turning up the earth, and raking and planting, awakens a thrill in the innermost recesses of the normal human heart, while a new seed-catalogue, filled with gay pictures and gaudy promises, becomes a poem, nothing less. ”

“ As in the natural world we find the nutritious fruit not lying like pebbles on the ground, but hung on graceful trees and shrubs, heralded by fair and fragrant blossoms, embowered in verdant foliage, and itself beautifully shaped and tinted; so has the Lord arranged that the garden where grows the fruit of the tree of life, should abound in all that is most lovely to man's natural perception; and do we not slight this bounteous care for our mind's enjoyment while he makes provision for our soul's sustenance, when we neglect to point these things out to the notice of our children? ”

“ And if the body is a world, how much more, then, our precious and immortal soul! Ay, it is a garden full of sweet and bitter herbs, full of evil lusts like ravening beasts and virtues like white lambs. ”

“ As the seed sprouts within the darkness of the soil and, perishing there, attains its full results in the higher [146] realm of sun and air, drawing from the soil that which, stored within the grain, gives power to reproduce its better self, so the soul strikes anchorage in the lower planes and draws from its varied experiences that which, transmuted after the body's death, gives the power to return with greater life. ”

“ Just as the majestic adult tree lets fall from its thousand branches upon the soil the countless seeds which are to germinate there, so the spiritualized beings who dwell in the sun shed their emanations, their animated germs, upon all the planets. These germs, carried to the earth by the sunbeams, and falling upon our globe, produce the vegetables which afterwards give birth to the various animals, by the effect of the successive transmigrations of the same soul into the bodies of these creatures. ”

“ We can imagine the vegetable soul, while inspired from the realm of the spiritual, yet belonging in origin to the lowest unconscious external plane of the spiritual. For the vegetable has no conscious life, no mentality, nothing that pertains to the spiritual, except the instinct to grow. ”

“ But above and beyond this the pleasurable feeling which the sight of vegetable nature gives us, comes from that look of rest, peace and satisfaction which it wears; whilst the animal world is mostly presented to us in a state of unrest, pain, even of struggle. This explains why it is so easy for the sight of vegetation to put us into a state where we become a pure intelligence, freed from ourselves. ”

“ This vital yet separable element is what, for the want of a better word, we must call the soul of a plant, just as a similar vital and separable element is commonly supposed to constitute the soul of man; and on this theory or myth of the plant-soul is built the whole worship of the cereals, just as on the theory or myth of the human soul is built the whole worship of the dead,--a towering superstructure reared on a slender and precarious foundation. ”

“ In general we may say that the process of reproduction is carried on in the vegetable kingdom by the planting of the seed in the earth as a mother, and that a similar process is carried on in the animal kingdom by a distinctly indicated male and a distinctly indicated female. The germ of life contained in the seed of the plant or animal would seem to contain what we have called the soul-form, a spiritual something capable of reproducing itself in a new individual of the same species. ”

“ Has the law of ethereal vibrations undergone any recent changes to debar or molest the communion of the soul with its spiritual father, any more than it has debarred contact with its material mother or environments?
We only understand the great laws of nature by effects. We know that vegetation planted in native soil and properly attended with light, heat and moisture, will grow and yield a certain species of fruit. ”

“ Whereas in animal and man a considerable part of the life-processes conceal themselves within the organism, in order to provide a basis for inner soul processes, the plant brings its inner life into direct and total outer manifestation. ”

“ The species is preserved, but not the particular individual. Each limb, each twig, even each leaf is a new individual, which grows out from the previous growth as the first sprout grew from the seed. Each part furnishes a soil for the next. When a plant no longer sends out new individuals, we say it is dead. The life of the plant is only a life of nutrition.
Aristotle called vegetable life "the nutritive soul," and the life of the animal the "feeling," or sensitive soul. ”

“ Whole Floras, all Linnæus' and Buffon's volumes, are but dry catalogues of facts; but the most trivial of these facts, the habit of a plant, the organs, or work, or noise of an insect, applied to the illustration of a fact in intellectual philosophy, or, in any way associated to human nature, affects us in the most lively and agreeable manner. The seed of a plant,—to what affecting analogies in the nature of man, is that little fruit made use of, in all discourse, up to the voice of Paul, who calls the human corpse a seed,—"It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body." ”

“ The vegetable soul, while a result of creation and continued by its processes, comes from and exists in the seed
The animal soul is likewise a result of an original act of creation, and continued by its processes through the parents, who are now more markedly male and female. ”

“ The mind broods like a hen on eggs. The trouble is, that you are not thinking about anything, but are really vegetating like the plants around you. I begin to know what the joy of the grape-vine is in running up the trellis, which is similar to that of the squirrel in running up a tree. We all have something in our nature that requires contact with the earth. In the solitude of garden-labor, one gets into a sort of communion with the vegetable life, which makes the old mythology possible. ”

“ The fruitful earth holds in her bosom death and life, both together, and out of her comes health. In like manner there lie in the heart of man diverse instincts,—seeds of good and evil, ready to germinate. For long seasons seeds of one kind burst forth in the soil of a man's nature and thrive. ”

“ Let us consider the physical body of man and its mechanism, as a plant and, indeed, it is akin to the life of the plant in its nature. What does the plant require to bring it up from seed to sprout, from sprout to plant, with flower, seed and fruit? The answer is simple—fresh air, sunlight, water, and nourishing soil—these things, and all of them, must it have in order to grow to healthy maturity. And Man's physical body requires just the same things—all of them—in order to be healthy, strong and normal. ”

“ But in the lower animal grades and in the vegetal world the courting of life and the shrinking from death go on without conscious intelligence, as the blades of grass in a meadow or the clustering leaves upon a tree compete with one another for the maximum of exposure to sunshine until perhaps stout boughs and stems are warped or twisted in the struggle. ”

“ The growth, development and ripening of human seed becomes a beautiful and sacred mystery. The tree, the rose and all plant life are equally as mysterious and beautiful in their reproductive life. Does not this alone prove to us, conclusively, that there is a Divinity in the background governing, controlling and influencing our lives? Nature has no secrets, and why should we? ”

“ When we contemplate the vegetable productions of nature, we find that they impart a tranquillity to the mind, which the animal kingdom, ever slaves to conflicting passions, can never produce;—when suffering from violent emotions, an indescribable degree of repose is felt while viewing the tranquil but beautiful scene of a well-furnished garden, or the more magnificent grandeur of forest scenery. ”

“ The tiny, vivid germ that contained the bud of her real self, her real love, was killed, she would go on growing as a plant, she would do her best to produce her minor flowers, but her leading flower was dead before it was born, all her growth was the conveying of a corpse of hope. ”

“ Theory applied to vegetable Forms.—Passing onward and upward in the scale of being, taking into view, now, the organic forms of vegetable life, do we not find a more definite articulate expression of the spiritual and invisible under the material form? The flower that blooms in our path, the sturdy tree that throws out its branches against the sky, or droops pensively, as if weighed down by some hidden sorrow, address us more directly, speak more intimately to our spirits, than the mere crystal can do, however elegant its form, or definite its outline. ”

“ Thus, there is, first and lowest, a plant soul, or life in vegetables. This is a mere principle of nutrition and reproduction, τὸ θρεπτικόν. Plants are able to assimilate what is necessary to support them, and to continue their like. ”

“ The External Soul in Plants FURTHER it has been shown that in folk-tales the life of a person is sometimes so bound up with the life of a plant that the withering of the plant will immediately follow or be followed by the death of the person. ”

“ As a seed of a tree, when planted in the soil, germinates, grows, flowers and bears fruit, so does a Karma-impression germinate, grow, flower and bear fruit. As the germ of a seed, in process of development, produces the events called sprouting, putting forth leaves and branches, flowering and fruiting, lo, a man's mental thought-impressions of previous lives, in almost the self-same way, sprout, put forth leaves and branches, flower and fruit in the shape of events, inside and outside of him. The thought-impressions are reflected upon the aura. ”

“ And by what path, man shall go, the prophet shews: "All flesh is grass, and all the glory of it as the flower of the field." Man's flesh is as hay, and all his joy and splendour as the flower of the meadow. Hay is first green grass, and soon after brings forth flowers: and a while after, the flowers dry and fall; after it is mown down with the scythe, and dried and taken to a house to be beasts' food. Thus it befalls man: in his childhood he springs and grows as the grass does; after, he comes to manhood and flowers in fairness and strength and wit and having of goods ”

“ The telltale charts of my crescograph {FN8-2} are evidence for the most skeptical that plants have a sensitive nervous system and a varied emotional life. Love, hate, joy, fear, pleasure, pain, excitability, stupor, and countless appropriate responses to stimuli are as universal in plants as in animals. ”

“ Does not the word, upon a tombstone, conjure up thoughts of Hesperian gardens—of immortal trees, laden with golden fruit; with delicious produce, the growth of a soil where not one useless weed takes root, where no baneful snake rustles among the grass, where no blight descends, no canker withers? Where we may pluck from the consenting boughs, and eat, and eat—and never, as in earthly things, find a worm at the core, a rottenness at the heart, where outside beauty tempted us to taste? ”

“ When interest in the production of vegetable food is added to that of the chase, the same ideas become associated with plants. Their sprouting and growth continue to suggest soul-powers; and, even though the ancestor idea characteristic of the animal totem cannot attain to prominence because of the greater divergence of plants from man, this very fact causes the phenomena of sprouting and growth all the more to bring into emphasis the magical character of these vegetable totems. ”

“ It is only by bearing vividly in mind this ceaseless and noiseless struggle between plants for their gaseous food and the sunshine which enables them to digest it that we can ever fully understand the varying forms and habits of the vegetable kingdom. To most people, no doubt, it sounds like pure metaphor to talk of an internecine struggle between rooted beings which cannot budge one inch from their places, nor fight with horns, hoofs, or teeth, nor devour one another bodily, nor tread one another down with ruthless footsteps. ”

“ In the tilling of the soil and the culture of plant life for our own purposes we have worked intimately together--though unconsciously. The efforts of nature spirits working by themselves without our assistance produce the wild flowers and berries of our woodlands and meadows, while partnership with the human yields a record of cultivated cereal, flower, and fruit, immensely richer.
"PLANT CONSCIOUSNESS.--The relation of the nature spirit to the consciousness functioning through the vegetable kingdom generally is an interesting study too, for the twain appear quite separate. ”