Note 91 — THE MONIST.

It must be borne in mind that I am using psychological terms in a merely general sense. Among many examples of such use I may quote Sachs (Physiology of Plants, p. 200) and F. Darwin (Address to Biological Section, Brit. Assoc, August 1891), who speaks of the plant as “perceiving” external change, as “recognising” the vertical line, “knowing” where the centre of the earth is, “translating” stimulus, etc. See also Darwin’s Forms of Flowers, p. 90.

Again Prof. M. Foster uses the word “will” in the same general (rather than metaphorical) sense. (Text Book of Phys., Part 3, pp. 1059, 1062, 1063.) Modes of reaction are thus verbally linked with consciousness, and we must remember that all our terms for the “mental” belong first to the “physical,” and that many are reciprocally used in the two spheres.