22. It is possible, even in plant-life, to distinguish something which
is the characteristic property of their bodies, and a power that
imparts it to them. What in us in the soul's faculty of desire, is in
plant-life the natural element (or, vegetative power).
PLATO IS IN DOUBT ABOUT THE EARTH'S SOUL; WHETHER SHE IS LIKE THOSE OF
STARS.
The earth also possesses a soul; and therefore also such a
potentiality; and it is from the earth that the plants derive their
vegetative potentiality. One might reasonably first ask which is this
soul that resides in the earth. Does she proceed from the sphere of
the universe (to which alone Plato seems to attribute a soul from the
very first), so as to make of her an irradiation of this sphere upon
the earth? Or should we on the contrary, attribute to the earth a soul
similar to that of the stars, as Plato does when he calls the earth the
first and most ancient of the divinities contained within the interior
of the heavens? Could it, in this case, be a divinity, if it did not
have a soul? It is therefore difficult to determine the exact state of
affairs, and the very words of Plato here instead of diminishing our
embarrassment, only increase it.
At first, how will we manage to form a reasonable opinion on this
subject? Judging from what the earth causes to grow, one might
conjecture that it possesses the vegetative potentiality. As many
living beings are seen to grow from the earth, why would it itself
not be a living being? Being besides a great living being, and a
considerable part of the world, why should the earth not possess
intelligence, and be a divinity? Since we consider every star as a
living being, why would we not similarly consider the earth, which is
a part of the universal living being? It would, indeed, be impossible
to admit that it was exteriorly contained by a foreign soul, and
that interiorly it would have no soul, as if it were the only being
incapable of having an individual soul. Why should we grant animation
to the (starry) bodies of fire, while not to the earthly body of our
earth? Indeed, bodies could as easily be of earth as of fire. Not
in the stars, any more than in the earth, is there any nose, flesh,
blood, or humours, although the earth is more varied than the stars,
and although it be composed of all the other living bodies. As to its
inability to move, this can be said only in reference to local motion.
(For it is capable of motion in the respect that it can feel.)