Chapter 1 - Page 2

awakening the envy of their
fellow-creatures; from which I infer it is at least innocent, if not
commendable.

We have traditions among us of the enjoyments of our predecessors, as
they rioted in the fertility of their cis-atlantic field; a happy company of
thriving and luxuriant plants. Still, I shall pass them over, merely
remarking that a bountiful nature has made such provision for the
happiness of all created things as enables each to rejoice in its existence,
and to praise, after its fashion and kind, the divine Being to which it
owes its creation.

{cis-atlantic = this side of the Atlantic (Latin)}

In due time, the field in which my forefathers grew was gathered, the
seed winnowed from the chaff and collected in casks, when the whole
company was shipped for Ireland. Now occurred one of those chances
which decide the fortunes of plants, as well as those of men, giving me a
claim to Norman, instead of Milesian descent. The embarkation, or
shipment of my progenitors, whichever may be the proper expression,
occurred in the height of the last general war, and, for a novelty, it
occurred in an English ship. A French privateer captured the vessel on
her passage home, the flaxseed was condemned and sold, my ancestors
being transferred in a body to the ownership of a certain agriculturist in
the neighborhood of Evreux, who dealt largely in such articles. There
have been evil disposed vegetables that have seen fit to reproach us
with this sale as a stigma on our family history, but I have ever
considered it myself as a circumstance of which one has no more reason
to be ashamed than a D'Uzes has to blush for the robberies of a baron
of the middle ages. Each is an incident in the progress of civilization; the
man and the vegetable alike taking the direction pointed out by
Providence for the fulfilment of his or its destiny.

{Milesian = slang for Irish, from Milesius, mythical Spanish conqueror
of Ireland; Evreux = town in Normandy, France; a D'Uzes = a member
of an ancient noble family in southern France}

Plants have sensation as well as animals. The latter, however, have no
consciousness anterior to their physical births, and very little, indeed, for
some time afterwards; whereas a different law prevails as respects us;
our mental conformation being such as to enable us to refer our moral
existence to a period that embraces the experience, reasoning and
sentiments of several generations. As respects logical inductions, for
instance, the linum usitatissimum draws as largely on the intellectual
acquisitions of the various epochas that belonged to the three or four
parent stems which preceded it, as on its own. In a word, that
accumulated knowledge which man inherits by means of books,