Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/313



HE corroborations I am now about to bring forward of the phenomenon of the will in plants, proceed chiefly from French sources, from a nation whose tendencies are decidedly empirical and which is reluctant to go a step beyond what is immediately given. The informant moreover is Cuvier, whose rigid adherence to the purely empirical gave rise to the famous dispute between him and Geoffroy de St. Hilaire. So we must not be astonished if the language we meet with here is less decided than in the preceding German corroborations and if we find each concession made with cautious reserve.

In his Histoire des Progrès des Sciences Naturelles depuis 1789 jusqu' à ce jour, Cuvier says: "Plants have certain apparently spontaneous movements, which they show under certain circumstances and which at times so closely resemble those of animals, that a sort of feeling and will might almost be attributed to plants on this account, especially by those who think they can perceive something of the same kind in the movements of the inward parts of animals. Thus the tops of trees always have a vertical tendency, excepting when they incline towards the light. Their roots seek out good earth and moisture and, in order to attain these, deviate from the straight course. Yet these different tendencies can not be explained by the influence of external causes,