LECTURE III.

NATURE SENTIENT. HABITS OF PLANTS.

THE hypothesis of Pythagoras was, that every thing in nature is sentient. From the recognized law of attraction, that every particle of matter in creation is attracted towards every other particle, to the doctrine, that every thing in nature is sentient, the transition is easy and natural. Orpheus and Homer had sung what Pythagoras taught. In their ear the living universe was constantly engaged in one grand and unceasing concert; and wisdom and philosophy were but the study of the music of the spheres. The elder poets have transmitted this doctrine in the splendid allegories of their poetry, which, unintelligible without this key, are easily unfolded by it.

The movement of plants to follow the course of the sun, the singular formation of stalagmites, and stalactites in caves, the magnetic power of the needle, the wonderful vegetation of some metals, and innumerable phenomena of apparent sensation in plants, the discovery of a new living universe concealed in the minuter parts of visible nature, and made known by the microscope, all these facts of modern investigation might have given some countenance to the ancient philosophers, in affirming, that nothing in nature is without sensation. In their view all creation was animated, and every portion of it peopled with nymphs and gods. For them, wood nymphs, crowned with violets, embellished and gave life to the sylvan scenery. Oreads, clad with moss,⚫ reposed in the cool grottos of the mountains. Dryads consorted together in the groves. Echo repeated 'I love thee' to each of her lovers. Aurora, spring, the hours, every thing was alive, and invested by imagination with celestial beauty.

Let us survey some of the facts, which Pythagoras would have adduced in support of the hypothesis, that every thing has sensation, and is endowed with the faculty of love. Admit it, and we are instructed, why the equisetum and the lythrum never quit their streams, or the majoram its arid rocks; why the heath is faithful to its hills, the hyoscyamus to its desolate places, and the lily of the valley to its woods. You will know why the apple tree delights to grow only in cultivated plains, and the pine upon the sides of the wind beaten hills. You will discover, why the reseda and helianthus turn round towards the sun; why the sensitive plant shuns the hand of man, as if conscious, that man is every where a destroyer. If you study the plants, that grow on the borders of streams, you will be surprised to note the number of flowers that never quit them. Among them you will be struck with the circe, which contemplates itself in the fountain, in which it bathes its delicate feet; the scrofularia with its little shells of velvet, the mints with their delightful perfume, and the beautiful 'forget me not,' which arises on the shore of the water, and reflects in it the azure of its flowers. All are acquainted with the touching metamorphosis of which the ancients supposed it the subject. The popular name, which it has received from a modern fact, is scarcely less impressive. Two youthful lovers walked on the banks of the Danube, the evening before their intended marriage. A beautiful flower of this plant with its celestial blue floated on that mighty stream. The young lady admired its brilliancy, and expressed regret, that such a lovely flower should sink in the waves. The lover at the word threw himself into the stream, seized the flowering stem, and, from some sudden illness, sunk under the wave: as he rose, exerting a last effort, he threw the flower on the shore, exclaimed 'forget me not,' and sunk forever.

If we ascend from plants to insects we shall find that nature has also treated them with maternal tenderness. The ephemera is born, passes a life of a minute's duration, and dies. The moment has been all consecrated to love; and, perhaps, according to its laws of sensation, that life may

have seemed as long as that of the ante-diluvians. The termites find their cradle a nuptial couch and a tomb. But their brief and secluded existence is passed in love. A caterpillar envelopes itself in a tissue of silk; for it is destined to experience an aerial transformation, in which alone it can perpetuate its kind. It bursts its silken envelope, to awaken with splendidly painted wings, with which it flutters from flower to flower, to live on aroma and love. The larger animals feel the impulses of the same passion, and fill the forests with their cries of joy. The birds have each their song of tenderness; and the nightingale pours the strain of love, imbued, in its true nature, with a touch of sadness.

The whole picture of creation is a grouping of harmonies, affinities, sensations, affections. We shall see, that even the vegetable, recently considered as remote from sensation as the mould from which it sprang, and into which it resolves at its decay, is distinguished by affinity, sex and movements, analogous to those of sensation and maternity. It was from similar views of nature, that Pherecides affirmed, that the Divinity became pure and unmixed love, when he created the worlds. May it not have been, that the contemplation of the reciprocal attraction, which every thing in nature exercises towards every other thing, considered as an innate principle of love, that led Newton to the secret of the universe? Love is every where, penetrates every thing, and imparts life to all that lives. The other passions were distributed unequally, for they are not indispensable to the perpetuity of life. Some people have been seen wholly devoid of apparent ambition; others without fear; others without avarice; but none without love.

If the passions which agitate us were to dispute the empire of the world, Ambition might say, 'I have invented war, and tithed the human race for my bloody hecatombs.' Avarice, 'I have raised the metals from their deep beds, and have united the two worlds in the golden chain of commerce.' Gluttony, 'I preside over vintages and harvests, fisheries and the chase.' Interest, 'I have blinded the eyes, hardened the hearts, and seared the affections of

men.' Hatred, 'I have made men tremble, and inspired the malignant desire of revenge.'

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Love would say, 'I was before all these. I was the eternal source of all life, the exhaustless fountain of all joy. I kindled the bridal torch, and prepared the nuptial couch. sang the first songs. For my habitation the arts reared their palaces. I gathered the flowers of all climes into gardens. My smile imparts fecundity to nature, and thrills the maternal bosom. Riches without me are nothing. With me poverty is happy. I raised the first altars to the divinity, and the first statues to men. I perpetuate the remembrance of whatever is amiable or good. I am the divine reason, and human reason resists me not. I subjugate wrath, soften ferocity, and quench revenge. I am the charm of the senses, the delight of souls, and an inspiration from on high.' Thus sung the ancient poets in view of the diffusive principle of love, and the indications of benevolence visible in every province of the creation.

Some modern philosophers have transcended even these views of the extent of love, as the prolific source of being. Some years since, Durand delivered at Paris a course of lectures upon mineralogy. He affirmed, that he was able mathematically to demonstrate, that stones were endowed with sensibility. To sustain his theory, he relied chiefly upon what he called the love of matter for the sun. He gave the following as an example. Take a solution of salt. Expose the vessel which contains it in such a manner as that one half the surface shall be in the sun, and the other half in the shade. In a little time you will see superb crystals in the enlightened part, and none in the portion deprived of the sun's rays. This singular phenomenon proves, that light enters into the composition of crystals. Diamonds are only found in those portions of the world, where the intense and almost continually cloudless action of the sun imparts the degree of heat and brilliancy, which determines their peculiar crystallization. These bright gems, so eagerly sought by power and beauty, according to this theory, are a kind of consolidated light;

and the opaque elements from which they are formed, on a principle of love for the solar rays, imbibe the germ of their formation from the influence of a planet placed many millions of leagues from them. The philosopher carried his thoughts still farther. Remarking that the highest mountains are placed under the equator, he attributed their creation to the light of the sun. According to him there is there on a vast scale the same process by which crystals form in the solution of salt, and Antisana, and Chimborazo, and Himala are formed of crystallized light! If these portions of the globe had been in shade, these sublime piles had never been reared.

Whatever may be thought of the system of Durand, it has awakened a great number of new observations. The highest mountains of the globe are granite. Granite is an outline of crystal, an imperfect crystallization. If Durand reasoned justly, light a little more brilliant, heat a little more vivid, and all these mountains had been diamond. In this way a trifling experiment upon a solution of salt, indicated by chance, suggested new principles in a theory of creation, which supposes it gradually becoming a crystallization.

The supposed sensibility of nature has been the foundation of a system, still more eccentric than this. A certain class of philosophers have seriously insisted, that the earth is an animated body. The Parisian cotemporaries of Patrin will not soon forget the beautiful physiological lectures he pronounced in that capital, touching the organization of this immense animal. According to him, the gases, which incessantly circulate in his huge bosom, form metals, minerals, and vegetation, nearly as blood supplies life by circulating in the veins. I do not know, whether he ascribed thought to the vast creature. He only affirmed that it was sensitive, not as a man, but as a world.

The compound microscope shows us whole nations, as I shall hereafter have occasion to remark, constituting the delicate blue on the surface of a plum. Vinegar is seen to be peopled with a kind of huge alligators. A drop of water shows its myriads, possessing organization and life. If