Thus by the control of molecular disposition of the conducting nerve,
nervous impulse, and the resulting sensation may become profoundly
modified. The external is not so overwhelmingly dominant, and man is not
to be merely passive in the hands of destiny. There is a latent power
which would raise him above the terrors of his inimical surroundings. It
remains with him that the channels through which the outside world reach
him should, at his command be widened or become closed. It may thus be
possible for him to catch those indistinct messages that had hitherto
eluded him or he may withdraw within himself, so that in his inner
realm, the jarring notes and the din of the world should no longer
affect him.
The whole audience heard the discourse with spell bound interest. The
Indian Scientist came to that realisation by experiments at which the
Indian Jogis of yore arrived by intuition. Following an absolutely
original line inventing his own apparatus of the most simple yet subtle
delicacy and having constructed them by the hands of Indian artisans,
working without collaborators and with the smallest modicum of
recognition by his fellow scientists, he has pursued his investigation
to a result which has been a revelation to the whole world. Dr. Bose has
proved that man and plant are one body and life in their physiology, in
their vital habits and nervous responses. He has clearly demonstrated
that nervous life in the plant responds to the same stimuli as in human
beings. He has established between animal and plant a unity of incipient
mind. The plant not only lives and dies, wakes and sleeps but it makes
the responses which in animal would be pleasure and pain.
Dr. Bose has made a great step towards the unification of knowledge. A
bridge has been built between man and inert matter. Even if we take Dr.
Bose's experiments with metals in conjunctions with his experiments on
plants, we may hold it to be practically proved for the thinker that
Life in various degrees of manifestation and organisation is omnipresent
in Matter and is no foreign introduction or accidental development, but
was always that to be evolved.
The ancient thinkers knew well that life and mind exist everywhere in
essence and vary only by the degree and manner of their emergencies and
functionings. All is in all and it is out of complete involution that
the complete evolution progressively appears. It is only appropriate
that for a descendant of the race of ancient thinkers who formulated
that knowledge, should be reserved the privilege of initiating one of
the most important among the many discoveries by which experimental
science is confirming the wisdom of his forefathers.
--_Amrita Bazar Patrika_, 4-12-1918.