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Mind in Plants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

Extract

In studying, during the last five years, the phenomena of Mind in the Lower Animals, I have encountered as great difficulty in drawing any definite or definable Psychical Line of Demarcation between Plants and the Lowest Animals as between the Higher Animals and Man. In other words, it appears to me that certain attributes of mind, as it occurs in Man, are common to Plants. The only alterative is the omission from our conceptions and definitions of Mind of certain phenomena common to plants with all classes of animals, including man—those, namely, that do not involve what we distinctively call consciousness. But the difficulties of such an elimination seem to me insuperable.

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1876 

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References

Notes

As described (e.g.) by—Google Scholar

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(2.) Hooker: Address on the same subject, before the British Association at Belfast, 1874, and reported at length in “Nature” for Sept. 3, 1874.Google Scholar

(3.) Balfour (Dr. Thomas A.G., of Edin.), in the “Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edin.,” for 1875; as well as in the “Garden,” for Aug., 1875, and in “Chambers's Journal,” for Aug., 21, 1875.Google Scholar

For instance (1) the English translation of Sachs; or of (2) Le Maout and Dccaisne; (3) the first vol. of Brown's “Manual;” or (4) the larger Manuals of Professor Balfour.Google Scholar

As demonstrated more especially by Prof. Burdon-Sanderson, for instance, in his “Note on the Electrical Phenomena which accompany irritation of the leaf of Dionæa muscipula” in the “Proceedings of the Royal Society,” No. 147, 1873: which phenomena I had the pleasure of seeing for myself, when he showed them before the British Medical Association at Edinburgh, in August, 1875.Google Scholar

Read to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, in September, 1874, and reported in “Nature,” for June 3, 1875, p. 100.Google Scholar

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E.g. In the so-called “Compaes-plant,” Vide Brown, “Manual,” p. 562.Google Scholar

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Just as such terms as sleep, love and soul, are used figuratively by at least the majority of those who employ them at all in regard to Plants.Google Scholar

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According to the recent researches of Professor Dewar, of Cambridge, and Dr. Lawson Tait, of Birmingham.Google Scholar

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§ Brown, p. 580.Google Scholar

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∗∗ Brown, p. 577.Google Scholar

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∗∗ “Mind and Body,” p. 155.Google Scholar

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“How plants behave,” 1872, p. 850, quoted by Brown, “Manual,” p.585.Google Scholar

Quoted by Brown, “Manual,” p. 558.Google Scholar

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A vol. of the “Traveller's Library,” 8 vo., London, 1854.Google Scholar

Vol. on “Winter,” 4th ed., 8 vo., Edin., 1841.Google Scholar

“Organic Laws,” p. 157.Google Scholar

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Mentioned by Bain, “Mind and Body,” p. 186.Google Scholar

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