Philosophy of the Unconscious

by Eduard Von Hartmann

  IV.

  THE UNCONSCIOUS AND CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM.

  THE question of the animation of the vegetable kingdom is an old one; outside Judaism and Christianity it has been almost everywhere affirmed. Our time, which has been nourished by the theories of these two systems of belief, and has not yet by a long way bridged over the gulf between spirit and sense, rent asunder by Christianity, has with difficulty admitted the kinship of men and animals; no wonder that it has not yet been able to elevate itself to the admission of the vegetable soul, since its physiology is accustomed to regard, even in the animal, the organic functions and reflex actions as merely material mechanisms. The subject has been best treated by Fechner in his memoir, “Nanna; or, The Psychical Life of Plants” (Leipzig, 1848), if also with an infusion of much of the fantastical; comp. further Schopenhauer, “On Will in Nature,” chap. “Vegetable Physiology,” and Autenrieth, “Views on Nature and Psychical Life.” I shall content myself with giving a short exposition of the doctrine, and with showing the considerably greater clearness which is introduced into the whole question by the distinction of unconscious and conscious psychical activity. I am convinced that many a one, who was obliged to maintain a negative position owing to the previous mode of treatment, will be reconciled to the doctrine of plant-animation when the notions of the Unconscious and Consciousness are kept quite apart.

  1. The Unconscious Psychical Activity of Plants. —The plant has, like the animal, organic plastic activity, vis medicatrix, reflex movements, instinct, and the impulse towards the beautiful; and if in the animal the phenomena must be regarded as unconscious effects of a soul, ought they not also so to be in the plant? If the unconscious psychical performances of the plant do not rise to the mental processes of the animal, but remain entirely sunk in corporeity, should therefore their soul be less soul, if that which it accomplishes is just as perfect in its sphere as that achieved by the animal in its sphere, nay, even far superior, because it builds up the refractory inorganic substances into higher and higher stages, whereas the animal, on the whole, only guides and watches over their natural degeneration? Let us consider the several movements in their order.

  (a.) Organic Formative Activity.—This works, as in the animal, according to a typical generic idea, which, it is true, allows a great latitude in respect of number of branches, leaves, &c., but nevertheless is still perfectly definite in the law of arrangement of the leaves, the form of leaf, inflorescence, and internal structure. This morphological type possesses the greatest constancy and unchangeability, although the nearer definition of the same for the physiological functions is tolerably indifferent. Accordingly, one cannot look upon this constancy as a result of useful adaptation in the struggle for existence; rather one has to perceive in the morphological type of the vegetable kingdom essential results of an ideal formative impulse of the Unconscious.—As in the ascending organisation of the animal kingdom typical anticipations are especially remarkable which only become suitable at higher stages, we have to mark such anticipations of the unconscious formative impulse of Nature in the vegetable kingdom likewise. Thus, e.g., higher Algæ exhibit an axis with lateral regularly arranged expansions which would at once be designated by the ignorant as stem, root, and leaves, whilst according to the dogma of the botanical system the Algæ are root and leafless plants. Hence the botanist calls the leaves of the Sargassum only “leaf-like expansions,” and the roots “root-like structures,” which want at the apex the “root-cap,”—and we will not disturb him in his faith.

  It is true one can divide the plant as one may divide lower animals, so that each part still possesses the capability of again completing the type from itself. But as in animals, so also in plants, the division is by no means unlimited, if a completion is to remain possible. In the plant, too, all parts are in reciprocal connection. Every part nearer the earth works up the materials precisely as the proximate part must receive it for further elaboration. The root of an oak would never nourish a beech, nor a tulip-bulb a hyacinth. There takes place also in the plant a harmonious interaction of all the parts, and this can only conduce to the end of the exhibition of the specific type in all the successive stages of development.

  If in winter one conducts a branch of a tree standing in the open air into a hothouse, the tree unfolds its leaves and flowers, whilst the rest of the tree retains its rigidity. The water required by the tree for this purpose is absorbed by the roots, as observation shows. Thus the latter are stimulated to increased absorption by the increased vital action of a branch (Decandolle, “Vegetable Physiology,” i. 76). How far a direct union by conduction takes place between the several parts of the plants we do not know, although the spiral vessels appear to point to that; but we just as little know in the case of the animal how far the harmonious interworking of the performances of the single parts is effected by conduction, and how far it is due to direct clairvoyance, as that of the individuals in the commonwealth of bees or ants.

  Propagation takes place in the animal and vegetable kingdoms on precisely the same principles, by cellular division, spores or budding, and sexual generation. The similarity in both provinces is, especially in the first stages of generation, so striking, that precisely the same reasons necessitate the assumption of an unconscious psychical influence in the origin of the plant as in the origin of the animal. The embryonic states certainly part company very soon after, as is not otherwise to be expected, according to the difference of the types to be produced; but in both the progressive development is a continuous struggle of the organising soul with the tendency of the material elements to decomposition, degeneration, and destruction of form. Only by the constant prevention of these degenerating processes and ceaseless reinstatement of the circumstances urging to continued formation, is it possible at any moment for the formed organic matter to get the better of the relatively formless inorganic matter, for a new higher stage of the specific type to be realised.

  Every single cell takes part in these operations; for the living part of every plant, as of every animal, consists of the sum of the living cells, except that in animals on the average the changes of form and fusion of the cells are somewhat more extensive, and the intercellular substance secreted and nourished by the cells is more copious. The cell is the chemical laboratory for the preparation of the various organic combinations; the division and amalgamation of the cells are the sole means for the setting up of the external form. At the same time just as strict a division of labour is carried out as in the animal; one kind of cells has to form this material, another that. As in the animal the cells are elaborated into bones, muscles, sinews, nerves, connective tissues, and epithelial cells; so in the plant into medullary cells, wood cells, cortical cells, sap cells, starch cells, &c. Each cell absorbs only those substances which it can make use of, or if it takes up aught else, it sends this on unassimilated. A circulation of sap takes place in each single cell, and likewise in the whole plant. It is true open vessels do not exist, but the circulation of the sap is effected by the endosmose and exosmose of the several cells; still, however, a perfect circulation of ascending and descending juices takes place, as a similar circulation takes place in all the parts of the animal body that are wanting in nutritive vessels (e.g., in the deciduous parts of the umbilicus, the bones, sinews, cornea, &c.), or with which the nutritive vessels do not directly communicate. Hales cemented a tube to the upper end of a lopped vine seven inches long; in the first experiment the height of the sap which had risen from the surface of the section into the tube amounted to 21 feet; in the second, quicksilver poured in from above was raised to the height of 38 inches. Hales calculates from this the energy of the ascending sap to be equal to five times the force of the blood in the femoral artery of a horse. One sees what in the higher animal is due to the heart’s action is in the plant the sum of the united absorption of all the sap cells. This difference frequently recurs, that the same actions in the animal are produced by centralisation, in the plant by d
ecentralisation: in the animal monarchically, in the plant in republican fashion. But the absorption by the cells is by no means merely mechanical; it takes place rather with selection of direction and material, for otherwise no circulation and no distribution of nutritive matters to different cells could take place.

  The directions of the growth of plants and parts of plants are, as a whole, conditioned by gravitation and light, now in the sense that they coincide with the directions of these forces; now in this, that they strive to place themselves in a transverse position with respect to the latter; now in such a way that both forces neutralise one another. The complications hence arising become, however, still more intricate by this: that certain plants change their behaviour to these determining forces according to the phases of their stage of development, if they are brought by special circumstances into a position where their normal behaviour would be inappropriate in respect of their vital needs. Thus Duchartre found, under the bottom of a water-butt, numerous fungi of the Mushroom family which had been compelled to grow from above downwards, but had deviated from the perpendicular at least 30°, and of which those more developed with opening and spreading caps exhibited a geniculate bending of the stalk upwards, about 5mm from its end, through which the normal position of the opened cap was restored. Seven examples of Clariceps, which were artificially brought into the inverted position in a glass tube, showed an analogous behaviour, only that the stalks formed here no angle but an arc of 3 to 5mm (“Der Naturforscher,” 1870, p. 194).

  In organic adaptation, likewise, the vegetable will bear comparison with the animal kingdom. There is even much which in animals is cared for by instinct, but which in plants, on account of their greater weight, is provided for by organic mechanisms, which again can be set up only by unconscious psychical activity. Here, too, the transitions are of such a kind that we cannot always sharply distinguish mechanisms and instincts.

  First there is a series of phenomena for the better nutrition of plants by retaining putrefying animal matters. The aborted leaves of the common Teazel—Dipsacus fullo-num—form about the stem a kind of basin, which is filled with rain-water, and in which many accidentally drowned insects are often found. The like is found in a tropical parasitic plant—Fillandsia utriculata. The Sarraceniæ have leaves which, latterly rolled together, form an ochrea, and are in part provided with opercula. Short, stiff hairs prevent imbibing insects from returning from the water-holding ochrea. Nepenthes destillatoria has the urn with an operculum as appendix of the shallow leaves. It closes the opercula by night and secretes sweetish water, enticing insects, which by day is again gradually evaporated from the open urn. The sweetness of the water is produced by hairy, glandular, excretory organs. Dionæa muscipula has a lobed divided appendage on each leaf, which is closely set with small glands, with six aculeæ in the middle and setaceous cilia at the edge. When an insect, attracted by the juice, sits on the two lobes, these shut up, and only again open when the animal has become quiet, i.e., when it is dead. Curtis sometimes found the captured fly enveloped in a slimy substance, which appeared to act as a solution on the same. The sun-dew, Drosera, has very red bristly hairs on the leaves, each of which terminates in a gland, from which in hot weather a small viscid pearly drop is exuded. This viscid sap retains small insects; the hairs quickly curve over the same, and gradually the whole leaf bends back with the apex towards the base (A. W. Roth, “Beiträge zur Botanik,” I Thl., 1782, p. 60). This sap is at the same time poisonous for insects (also unwholesome for sheep), and thereby compensates for what the plant wants in quick irritability. Roth often found in the open air leaves of the Sun-dew bent together, which always enclosed insects more or less in a state of decay. “Let any one imagine in boggy water small utricular leaves, bent together into a hollow tube with open mouth, irritable at their borders, with hair-like soft threads, whilst the opening acts at the same time venomously on small animals, and the inner surface of the cylindrical tube adapted for absorption. One would thus have an image, which would be compounded of the convolute or urn-shaped leaves of the Sarracenia and Nepenthes, of the irritability of the leaf-appendages of the Dionæa, and of the irritable but poison-secreting hairs of the Drosera. One gets, however, also at the same time the actual picture of the organisation of a small insect remarkable for its instinct—the green hydra of sweet water, Hydra viridis L.” (Autenrieth); for the touch of the mouth of this creature also acts poisonously. That such plants thrive more luxuriantly on products of animal putrefaction absorbed by the leaves is experimentally proved in the case of the Dionæa.

  Very wonderful also are those contrivances in plants which subserve sexual propagation. In erect flowers the stamens are generally longer than the pistils; in pendulous ones, the reverse. Where the pollen grains cannot without assistance fall on the stigmata, and the wind is not sufficient to carry them away, insects have to perform this office. Hence the attractive bright colours of flowers, their far-reaching scent, which is always developed most strongly in the daytime, when the insects most suited to the particular flower swarm; hence the sweet sap at the base of the flower, which compels the dainties-loving animal to creep deep enough within, so that it brushes off with its bristly body the pollen, which then comes to adhere to the pistil, either of the same or of another flower. In the Asclepiadeæ and Orchids the pollen adheres to the insect by means of a sort of bird-lime. Aristolochia clematitis has a bellied flower with a narrow entrance, which by means of lateral hairs prevents the exit of the little midges that have crept in. These swarm about in their prison until they have stripped off the pollen with their feathered antennæ and brought it to the stigma. Immediately after fructification the hairs begin to dry up and fall off, and release the flies from their prison.

  If the pollen grains become wet, they expand and burst; then fertilisation becomes impossible. In this way rainy weather becomes very injurious at the blossoming of the grain. The precautionary measures of the flowers for escaping the wet are very numerous. In the Vine and the species of Rampions fertilisation takes place under the protection of the petals cohering by their tips; in the Leguminosæ the standard (vexillum) accords the same protection; in the Labiatæ, the upper lips of the corolla; in the species of Calyptranthe, the operculate calyx. Many plants close their corolla when it is about to rain (this is instinct); many also by night to protect themselves from the dew; others at night-time bend round their flower-stalks, so that the open side of the corolla is turned aside. Impatiens noli me tangere hides even its flowers under its leaves by night. In most aquatic plants dry fertilisation is rendered possible by this, that they do not bloom before their stalks have reached the surface of the water. The Alga fixed to the sea-bottom flowers in leafy folds, which it is true are open laterally, but hinder the entrance of the water by means of excreted gases. The Water-crowfoot (Ranunculus aquaticus), whose flowers are flooded at high water, is protected by the pollen dropping out of the anthers at a time when the flower is still a close, air-containing bud. The Water-nut (Trapa natans) lives at the bottom of the water until flowering time, when the petioles, ranged side by side into a kind of leaf-rose, swell to cellular bladders filled with air, and raise the whole plant to the surface of the water. Thus florescence and fructification take place in the air. When this is over, the bladders are filled with water, and the plant sinks again to the bottom, where it then brings its seed to maturity. Still more complicated is the arrangement of the species of Utricula for the same purpose. Their strongly ramified roots are covered with a multitude of small round bladders (utriculi) possessing a kind of movable lid, and filled with a mucus that is heavier than water. By means of this ballast the plant is retained at the bottom of the water, until at flowering time the mucus is got rid of by excreted gases. It now slowly rises to the surface, flowers and fructifies, and is then again drawn down, whilst the root again secretes mucus, which now on its part drives out the air from the little sac (Decandolle, “Vegetable Physiology,” ii. 87). The Vallisneria is an aquatic plant w
ith distinct sex (diœcious), which grows attached at the bottom of the water. The flower of the female plant sits on a long screw-shaped stalk, which subsequently extends and lifts the flower above the water. The male plant has a shaft tending straight upwards. The four-leaved spathe is split into four pieces through further expansion of the inner parts, and now the male organs of fructification swim freely about in the water in thousands. As soon as a female flower is fertilised the stem again spirally contracts, and thus the seeds are brought to maturity below.—Also in Serpicula verticillata the male flowers, when near rupture, are released from the opened spathes and swim to the female, whereby they rest on the apices of the replicate sepals and petals.

  “One species of plant jerks ingeniously far and wide the ripe seed-grains by means of the elasticity of the capsule which flies open spontaneously. The beards of oats are, on the contrary, wound round spirally, and are so hyproscopic that the first rain unrolls them, and compels the thereby backwards-thrust grain to creep under the nearest clod, and so to betake itself beneath the earth for future sprouting. Other plant-seeds are provided with wings or plumose pappus, in order to be borne through the air. Others even have little hooks, in order to cling to passing animals, that they may be again dispersed by these means to other places” (Autenrieth, 151). The ripe fruits of the Stork’s-bill are jerked off, by the curling back of the indurated styles, three to four feet from the plant. The extending style, by becoming damp, makes a spiral revolution, which chiefly causes the sharp point of the seed to strike the earth somewhere, into which it must now penetrate. If drier weather occurs, little bristles on the seed-corn, which act as barbs, prevent a recoil, and the shortening is followed by a drawing of the style towards the grain, so that now, with repeated moistening, the newly gained point of support for the end of the style permits a deeper penetration into the ground. Since the lower part of the style itself is also provided with barb-like bristles, on change of weather the fruit can interpenetrate the soil even to complete disappearance in the manner of a corkscrew.