Boethius, The Consolation 3.37

. . . “But about trees and plants, I have great doubts as to what I should agree to in their case, and in all inanimate objects.”

“But in this case too,” she said, “you have no reason to be in doubt, when you see how trees and plants grow in places which suit them, and where, so far as nature is able to prevent it, they cannot quickly wither and perish. For some grow in plains, others on mountains; some are nourished by marshes, others cling to rocks; some are fertilized by otherwise barren sands, and would wither away if one tried to transplant them to better soil.

“Nature grants to each what suits it, and works against their perishing while they can possibly remain alive. I need hardly remind you that all plants seem to have their mouths buried in the earth, and so they suck up nourishment by their roots and diffuse their strength through their pith and bark: the pith being the softest part is always hidden away at the heart and covered, protected, as it were, by the strength of the wood; while outside, the bark, as being the defender who endures the best, is opposed to the unkindness of the weather.

“Again, how great is Nature's care, that they should all propagate themselves by the reproduction of their seed; they all, as is so well known, are like regular machines not merely for lasting a time, but for reproducing themselves for ever, and that by their own kinds.

"Things too which are supposed to be inanimate, surely do all seek after their own by a like process. For why is flame carried upward by its lightness, while solid things are carried down by their weight, unless it is that these positions and movements are suitable to each?

"Further, each thing preserves what is suitable to itself, and what is harmful it destroys. Hard things, such as stones, cohere with the utmost tenacity of their parts, and resist easy dissolution; while liquids, water, and air, yield easily to division, but quickly slip back to mingle their parts that have been cut asunder. And fire cannot be cut at all.” . . .

—from Book 3, Prose 11

I recall a lovably eccentric fellow from Russia who was trying to defend a doctoral dissertation, where he argued that everything, men and women, animals and plants, rocks and rivers, all spoke with a certain language. I at first found this ridiculous, because while some living things have the power of voice, only living things with reason have the power of speech. And how, pray tell, can a pebble or a puddle, lacking both life and reason, say anything at all?

I should have been a bit more open-minded, not by agreeing that a boulder can form words, or that a monkey can write a poem, but by accepting that, in the broadest sense, everything expresses its nature by what it does. In this manner, figuratively if not literally, it “speaks” to us, by telling us about its identity. Actions and reactions, even when they lack awareness, are signs of something.

Likewise, all things, whether aware or unaware, living or dead, reveal a purpose, simply by being what they are. In doing so, by behaving according to their natures, they stand for themselves, they preserve themselves, and they continue as themselves until they are met by a force that overwhelms them. They may not know what they do, but they still do what they do, and they remain firm in what they do.

I was taught a healthy respect for Nature from the earliest age, and so I can see quite clearly how a tree, for example, is made most wonderfully. It will fit itself into a certain environment, and it will reach outs is roots, and it will spread out its branches.

Starve it of water and light, or inflict upon it some disease, or hack away at its limbs, and it will fight back to survive. It will do so in the most remarkable of ways, and whatever may come to it, it will still be certain to make some more versions of itself.

It will not go quietly, because it is seeking its own unity. Does it “know” what it does? I have spoken to trees on a number of odd occasions, though I can’t say they spoke back to me, so I have no direct account from them. But perhaps I wasn’t listening in the right way.

The tree is living, but yet the same is true of earth, or water, or air, or fire. Each “element” moves in its own way, responds to its contrary in its own way, and strives to maintain its unity in its own way.

Throw a rock in the air, and it falls back. Put a dam on a river, and it pushes back. Build a tent to block the wind, and the wind blows away the tent. Try to extinguish a burning building, and the flames will sneak right by you to the next building.

Each and every thing in this wide world defines itself, and thereby seeks to be what it is made to be. It seeks to be one and complete, not many and divided. The whole Universe craves unity.

Written in 9/2015