Given earth, air, and due
temperature, the plant must grow: it is like a clock, which being once
wound up will go till it is stopped or run down: it is like the wind
blowing on the sails of a ship--the ship must go when the wind blows it.
But can a healthy boy help growing if he have good meat and drink and
clothing? can anything help going as long as it is wound up, or go on
after it is run down? Is there not a winding up process everywhere?
"Even a potato {5} in a dark cellar has a certain low cunning about him
which serves him in excellent stead. He knows perfectly well what he
wants and how to get it. He sees the light coming from the cellar window
and sends his shoots crawling straight thereto: they will crawl along the
floor and up the wall and out at the cellar window; if there be a little
earth anywhere on the journey he will find it and use it for his own
ends. What deliberation he may exercise in the matter of his roots when
he is planted in the earth is a thing unknown to us, but we can imagine
him saying, 'I will have a tuber here and a tuber there, and I will suck
whatsoever advantage I can from all my surroundings. This neighbour I
will overshadow, and that I will undermine; and what I can do shall be
the limit of what I will do.
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