? If we say that it acts mechanically, and
mechanically only, shall we not be forced to admit that sundry other and
apparently very deliberate actions are also mechanical? If it seems to us that
the plant kills and eats a fly mechanically, may it not seem to the plant that a
man must kill and eat a sheep mechanically?
    But it may be said that the plant is void of reason, because the growth of a
plant is an involuntary growth. Given earth, air, and due temperature, the plant
must grow; it is like a clock, which being once wound up will go till it is
stopped or run down; it is like the wind blowing on the sails of a ship - the
ship must go when the wind blows it. But can a healthy boy help growing if he
have good meat and drink and clothing? Can anything help going as long as it is
wound up, or go on after it is run down? Is there not a winding up process
everywhere?
    Even a potato4 in a dark cellar has a certain low cunning about him which
serves him in excellent stead. He knows perfectly well what he wants and how to
get it. He sees the light coming from the cellar window and sends his shoots
crawling straight thereto; they will crawl along the floor and up the wall and
out at the cellar window; if there be a little earth anywhere on the journey he
will find it and use it for his own ends. What deliberation he may exercise in
the matter of his roots when he is planted in the earth is a thing unknown to
us, but we can imagine him saying, I will have a tuber here and a tuber there,
and I will suck whatsoever advantage I can from all my surroundings. This
neighbour I will overshadow, and that I will undermine; and what I can do shall
be the limit of what I will do. He that is stronger and better placed than I
shall overcome me, and him that is weaker I will overcome.
    The potato says these things by doing them, which is the best of languages.
What is consciousness if this is not consciousness? We find it difficult to
sympathize with the emotions of a potato; so we do with those of an oyster.
Neither of these things makes a noise on being boiled or opened, and noise
appeals to us more strongly than anything else because we make so much about our
own sufferings. Since, then, they do not annoy us by any expression of pain we
call them emotionless; and so qua mankind they are; but mankind is not
everybody