never
having done it before? Show me the example and I will say no more, but until it
is shown me, I shall credit action where I cannot watch it, with being
controlled by the same laws as when it is within our ken. It will become
unconscious as soon as the skill that directs it has become perfected. Neither
rose-seed, therefore, nor embryo should be expected to show signs of knowing
that they know what they know - if they showed such signs, the fact of their
knowing what they want, and how to get it, might more reasonably be doubted.«
    Some of the passages already given in chapter xxiii were obviously inspired
by the one just quoted. As I read it, in a reprint shown me by a Professor who
had edited much of the early literature on the subject, I could not but remember
the one in which our Lord tells His disciples to consider the lilies of the
field, who neither toil nor spin, but whose raiment surpasses even that of
Solomon in all his glory.
    »They toil not, neither do they spin«? Is that so? »Toil not«? Perhaps not,
now that the method of procedure is so well known as to admit of no further
question - but it is not likely that lilies came to make themselves so
beautifully without having ever taken any pains about the matter. »Neither do
they spin«? Not with a spinning-wheel; but is there no textile fabric in a leaf?
    What would the lilies of the field say if they heard one of us declaring
that they neither toil nor spin? They would say, I take it, much what we should
if we were to hear of their preaching humility on the text of Solomons, and
saying, »Consider the Solomons in all their glory, they toil not neither do they
spin.« We should say that the lilies were talking about things that they did not
understand, and that though the Solomons do not toil nor spin, yet there had
been no lack of either toiling or spinning before they came to be arrayed so
gorgeously.
    Let me now return to the Professor. I have said enough to show the general
drift of the arguments on which he relied in order to show that vegetables are
only animals under another name, but have not stated his case in anything like
the fullness with which he laid it before the public. The conclusion he drew, or
pretended to draw, was that if it was sinful to kill and eat animals, it was not
less sinful to do the like by vegetables, or their seeds