Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVI HAVE PLANTS SOULS? Modern scientific research has placed another stumbling block in the way of our acceptance of " survival " in any form, by showing us that all life is graded--that the animal and plant worlds melt into one another, with no clearly defined lines of demarcation. It is indeed often difficult to tell where the one ends and the other begins. This being so, the question may properly be raised: If man is entitled to immortality, why not the animals also? and if the animals, why not the insects, plants, metals, minerals--in fact every form of existence--since all have been shown to be inter-related and similar to a remarkable degree? This fact has struck one of our modern thinkers so forcibly, indeed, that he himself has said: "For my own part, then, so far as logic goes, I am willing that every leaf that ever grew in this world's forests and rustled in the breeze should become immortal. It is purely a question of fact: are the leaves so, or not?" (H1tman Immortality, by William James, pp. 43-44.) The problem is a very proper one, once we grant the similarity between plants and animals. The fact, however, may be doubted. Recent researches undertaken by Prof. Chunder Bose, M. A., D. Sc., of the University of Calcutta, however, seem to have settled this question in the affirmative; and have shown us that plants in very truth live and react in much the same manner as the simpler forms of life, as we know it in animal organisms. This being so, the question calls for solution, and it may he interesting to give here a resume of the more important facts, seeming to show that plants do, in fact, possess a form of life-energy so closely akin to that of animals that it is hard to distinguish between the two. Plants eat, ...