'VEGETATION, the process, act, or state of vegetating.'-DICTIONARY.

In the season of the year when ‘the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell,' man feels vegetable stirrings within him. He takes to salads. He meditates on a lettuce-leaf. His thoughts turn with longing to greens; the dandelion of the lawn, the sorrel of the woods, the cress of the garden or stream, pale endive or chicory, long-leafed romaine or cos, each is in its turn a poem, a moment's monument. A green pepper becomes the quintessence of all that's green; in it the coolness of a New England spring is married to the pungency of a tropical summer. All winter the red of fire or flannel has been grateful; now the colors that thrill him are green and blue. All winter he has been an animal, and, like the animals, has probably longed to hibernate; but in the spring the vegetable part of him awakes. The sap-serum in his veins has become choked with over-fed red corpuscles as a trout-brook is choked with watercresses in late summer. He unconsciously longs to become sappy. Even the carnivores, the cats and dogs, may be detected eating grass. They, through domestication, have become more or less vegetable, too.

We have hit here upon a great discovery and would not have it slighted. Man's physical make-up is two-fold, - animal and vegetable. The primitive man was wholly animal; the most highly civilized man inclines to become vegetable. That this is true is shown by a startling array of facts, as,

for instance, the spread of vegetarianism, and the 'back to nature' craze. The first instinct of the animal is to build itself a house. From the clam to the philosopher, all animals grow, steal, find, or build houses. In the vegetable world it is different. Who ever heard of a turnip or a chrysanthemum growing a shell, building a nest, or hiding in a cave? No. As a race the vegetables, since the primeval ooze, have been of the open air; and man, without knowing why, is taking to sleeping outof-doors, playing golf, studying nature, in his blind way blaming it all on the pursuit of health, whereas it is really the eternal vegetable in him asserting itself.

We have been accustomed to say that the primal season awakens a longing for liberty, for the 'open road,' to 'get close to nature.' We have been on the wrong track. The truth is that the vegetable part of us, which is more or less deciduous, has been down-trodden and oppressed for months and now responds to the burgeoning of the outside world; it, too, sprouts and buds and leafs.

The higher the nature of the individual, the more it approximates the vegetable. Does an animal aspire? Does he worship the sun? Is he patient, long-suffering, meek? Not unless he subsists upon a vegetable diet. Behold the mild-eyed cow, how she sits under a tree, ruminating not only her cud but thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. But, you say, the bull also lives on grass and yet is not

especially mild-eyed. We can only suppose for of what good is a theory unless the facts can be made to fit it?

that the bull's surprising antics, boosting fishermen over fences and snorting defiance of red petticoats, are all a fraud, a pretense of an irritable temper assumed in order to impress the mild-eyed cow under the tree. That she is privately laughing at him, we may be sure, if the custom of human ladies in the presence of their spouses' thunderings is an indication. You object again that, if the cow is really a vegetable, we are ascribing to vegetables a sense of humor. And why not? Does not M. Maeterlinck, in his book on the intelligence of flowers, prove conclusively that that ill-smelling orchid about which he waxes so eloquent has a sense of humor? She plays a practical joke of the meanest description upon every bee that is unfortunate enough to poke his nose into her nectary. For, before he knows it, he is sliding down a greased board, and plumps into a pool of stagnant water out of which he cannot scramble without coating his furry back, in which he takes such pride, with a dusting of pollen. He may be recompensed for his disarray by the exhilaration of shooting the chutes, but the orchid might at least provide him a boat.

There used to be a notion that the difference between the animal and the plant was due to sensation and volition in the former. But M. Maeterlinck and others have disposed of all that nonsense. They tell us that the plants which appear so placid, so resigned, in which all seems acquiescence, silence, obedience, meditation, are, on the contrary, prodigious examples of insubmission, courage, perseverance, and ingenuity.' Surely, such traits indicate sensation and volition with a vengeance. Time was when to call a man a vegetable was to incur a thump,

and to vegetate was a term of contumely, carrying an image of a slothful body and a blank mind. We were told that it is not growing like a tree that doth make man perfect be. But all that was the fruit of inadequate knowledge. To-day, to call a man a parsnip or a pumpkin may be the most delicate of compliments; for who can say what prodigies of 'insubmission, courage, perseverance, and ingenuity' those humble and maligned vegetables may be displaying every day? However, until the light of knowledge has spread further, it may be as well to keep to the older though less subtle forms of flattery.

We have said enough to show that there is nothing humiliating in being a vegetable. Those of us in whom the elements are balanced can experience only vaguely, in the salad days of spring, the joys of vegetation, yet we can at any rate have the fun of classifying our friends. To this end it is important to adopt a nomenclature and distinguish symptoms. Those in whom the animal is the dominant element and the vegetable is recessive, to employ the most approved Mendelian terminology of the day, we shall call zoögens; those in whom the vegetable component is dominant and the animal recessive, we shall call vegetals. The classification of the human race as bromides and sulphites, propounded some time ago by a brother philosopher, was a creditable performance enough, but in no way affects ours, which is of a profounder - indeed, we may say with all modesty, of an ultimatesort. Charles Lamb's division into borrowers and lenders is also witty, but entirely unscientific; the fact that he does not use a single Latin or Greek term speaks for itself.

We have now, therefore, an apparatus which will save us from the jeers of the men of science, and we can re

To give men room to wander in it,
Therefore is the world so wide.

But Emerson replies,

That each should in his house abide, Therefore is the world so wide. These two declarations seem at first glance to contradict, but if we remember that Wilhelm Meister was a zoögen and Emerson a vegetal, all becomes clear. The zoögen exhausts his animal spirits by footing it round the habitable globe, or that fraction of it which his pocketbook and family cares will permit; while the vegetal has no animal spirits and therefore lets his soul do the traveling. The supreme vegetals of the world are the East Indians; and of them chief are the Brahmans, and of them, the adepts or mystics who sit on Himalayan crags and vegetate so successfully that their souls are said to catch an occasional peep at karma, whatever that may be. This is carrying the thing rather too far, however; for, although we have not before noted the fact, a man may vegetate so thoroughly that he becomes mineral; in other words, like the Irishman's horse that learned to live without eating, he ups and dies. Temperance in all things is best.

As one would naturally suppose, the zoögens and vegetals have a hearty contempt for one another. A Chinaman's opinion of an Occidental will give you the idea. Read Wordsworth to a thorough-going zoögen and hear his snorts of disdain. And then turn VOL. 106 - NO. 2

has to say of a man to whom a primrose is nothing but a primrose. It is really hardly fair, for perhaps Peter was an authority on donkeys. If he could not expound the Vedas of the violet, it may be that the Koran of the kangaroo or the Talmud of the titmouse was an open book to him. Is it any wonder that the zoögens call all vegetals mystics or symbolists, if nothing worse? This mutual distrust may be due to hereditary instincts, survivals of a long line of vegetal ancestors eaten by ancestral zoögens. Is it any wonder if the vegetal suffers from 'obstinate questionings,' 'blank misgivings'? Does the rabbit tremble in the presence of the fox, or the hen in the shadow of the hawk? All that these small deer desire is to be let alone; and this is the prevailing wish of the human vegetal.

Of course, the zoögens accuse the vegetals of being passionless, not realizing that there is a vegetable passion quite as manifest in some people as animal passion in others. It is true that the vegetals are by nature celibate, in the accepted sense. Yet when the heat of the day has passed and dewy dusk settles over the landscape, who shall say what recondite and mystical soul-unions the vegetal may delight in, — idyllic as a fête champêtre by Watteau, innocent as the matings of fairies in the forest of Arden, when Daphne hath broke her bark, and that swift foot, The angry gods had fastened with a root To the fixed earth, doth now unfettered run To meet the embraces

of her human lover? You and I, poor vegeto-zoögens, cannot see her white limbs flash by in the moonlight; her kisses, soft as the kisses of remembered love, are not for us; her breath is only the wind in the leaves, her voice only the murmur of the tired earth sighing in sleep.

Women are by nature more vegetal than men. We enter here a field of speculation which angels might fear to tread. Let us hasten to qualify our statement by saying that women used to be more vegetal than men. Of late years, whether because of a change of diet or by some obscure natural law of compensation to offset the growing vegetality of man, they have become more and more zoögenic. That marvelous patience which used to fill us with wonder has left them. They are decidedly on the go. Theirs no longer vegetally to reason why; theirs zoögenically to do or die. That what they do or why they should die is of no particular consequence, is the first mark of the zoögen. It was long ago discovered that it is fatal for a zoögenic man to marry a zoögenic woman, and as long as men were zoögenic they took good care that women should be vegetal; they accomplished this very simply, by making woman sit still. She had no alternative but to vegetate. Is it any wonder that, now she 'hath broke her bark,' men are bewildered? Suppose the whole world of plants should suddenly take to its heels, putting into them all the store of energy hoarded up during eons of inaction. Would there not be a pretty kettle of fish? The zoögenic man loved the vegetal of the opposite sex quite as much as he hated that of his own. Such a wife was restful. As for the wife who can beat him at his own game, but perhaps we had better change the subject.

In the phrenology of the vegetal the bump of acquisitiveness is totally lacking. As we have said, he wants to be let alone. If he have money, he will never be let alone. In his extreme development he eats merely to live. Like a true plant, he takes what is within reach and is satisfied. Suppression of the body may result in a flowering of great thought, as prize chrysanthe

mums are grown in small pots. His soul revolts against rich food and overeating and, if you seek him in a restaurant, you may find him in a corner with a bottle of claret and a lettuce salad; but the chances are that you will not find him. Go into the park or out into the country. There he is beside a brook making a pretense of fishing, or sitting on a rail-fence, or lying in the warm shade, as motionless, as elemental, as the rocks and trees. If you speak to him, you will find him mild-mannered, rich in lore, loquacious and musical as a brook. 'What he knows, nobody wants,' but little cares he. He knows, nobody better, that the most interesting things in this world are the most useless. He has mastered the priceless secret of wasting time.

The true vegetal is not fat, as might be supposed; but, like Cassius, hath a lean and hungry look. Perhaps the best example of him in literature is Lewis Carroll's old man a-sitting on a gate. He is humorously sketched, it is true, but if we substitute for his dreams of mechanical invention speculations on Man, Nature, and God, questionings why 'Nature loves the number five, and why the star-form she repeats,' we have the typical vegetal: all the wistful earnestness of the man, all his physical patience and spiritual yearning, his bodily attenuation and plumpness of soul.

The discerning reader has long since seen that all that we call temperament or personality is a matter of the admixture of these two elements. The various temperaments found in men and women form a long chain, with pure zoögen at one end and pure vegetal at the other, while the vegeto-zoögens and zoo-vegetals lie between. The middle terms look upon the ends as types of genius, while each end looks upon the other as insane. It would require the compass of a book to study and

formulate all the intricacies of the system. It is enough to indicate the law, and leave the drudgery to the zoögens.

Now that we know what genius is, we can readily understand some of its peculiarities: for instance, why pure geniuses totally lack a sense of humor and yet are so funny to normal people. Humor is nothing but the ability to see the constant quarrel which is going on in man between his animal and vegetable natures. We who are of the middle series and therefore partake of both, are able to see the struggle between debasement and aspiration, thrift and extravagance, industry and laziness, and all the other countless contraries that flesh is heir to. Usually this is amusing; but when it becomes extreme, it is either tragic or ridiculous. Sancho Panza is pure vegetal of the ignoble sort, as his master is of the noble. The pathos as well as the humor of Don Quixote lies in the spectacle of a vegetal trying for all he is worth to be a zoögen. The fact that neither he nor Sancho sees anything the least bit funny in their antics simply proves the truth of our observation that the extremes of our human series lack the humorous sense. For the first requisite of genius is that it shall take itself seriously; and herein lies the solace of those of us who may regret that we were not born geniuses. Think of the fun we should have missed!

The zoögen who chances upon this treatise will read a page or two and throw it aside; the vegeto-zoögen will think he is called upon to take the whole thing humorously and will dutifully smile, even laugh. But your vegetal will know that every word is profoundly true; he will see nothing funny in it; the probability is that he will be moved to tears, because he has at last found an interpreter. He will see himself as in a glass and no longer darkly. After millenniums of misconstruction,

misapprehension, misinterpretation, he has been given his due.

Think of the joy this will bring to the hearts of the countless Rip van Winkles, Izaak Waltons, Sir John Falstaffs, Scholar Gipsies, who have been persistently maligned by the extreme zoögens as lazy good-for-nothings. Poor inoffensive mortals, whom their very nature precludes from defending themselves with their fists or in print; loved of birds and beasts and little children; creatures of the woodland vista, the checkered shade, the beehaunted orchard, the sedge-lined brook; shy hermit-crabs or caddis-worms of the genus homo; the zoögens have long had the laugh on you, but your day is dawning. The true inwardness of your philosophy will be revealed.

In a nation of indefatigable and fractious zoögens you have slept your naps and dreamed your dreams and reared your iridescent air-castles, even occasionally published your books, which have invariably startled the world. In a nation whose one verb has been To Do, you have consistently done nothing. You have taken time to be happy. You have let the body rest, that the soul might grow. Yours has not been to build sky-serapers, but temples of thought; not cantilever bridges, but the spans of dreams. Take heart! The time will come when there will be nothing left to do. The zoögens will all perforce either become vegetals or explode; and you, shy harbingers of the dawn, will then come into your own. In that dim future your effigies will be set up in the market-place (then overgrown with weeds), and before them will be burned incense of juniper berries and balm-of-Gilead buds; their brows will be crowned with chaplets of honeysuckle and sweet bay, and their feet laved with libations of elderberry wine mingled with the sugary sap of the maple.