Angela's father gazed with solicitude into the perplexed look and distorted countenance of the young man.
"You deduce consequences, Herr Frank, that could not be drawn from my admissions," said he mildly. "There is no conscious power in animals--no reflecting soul. The animal works with the power that is in it, as light and heat in the fire, as in the lightning the destructive force, as the exciting and purifying effects in the storm. The animal does not act freely, like man; but from necessity--according to instinct and laws which the Almighty has imposed, upon it."
"A gratuitous assumption! A shallow artifice," exclaimed Frank. "The animal shows understanding, design, and will; we must not deny him these faculties."
"If the lightning strikes my house and discovers with infallible certainty all the metal in the walls, even where the sharpest eye could not detect it, must you recognize mental faculties in the lightning in discovering the metal?"
Frank hemmed and was silent.
"What a botcher is the most learned chemist compared with the root-fibres of the smallest plant," continued Siegwart. "Every plant has its own peculiar life; this I observe every day. All plants do not flourish alike in the same soil. They only flourish where they find the necessary conditions for their peculiar life; where they find in the air and earth the conditions necessary for their existence. Set ten different kinds of plants together in a small plat of ground. The different fibres will always seek and absorb only that material in the earth which is proper to their kind; they will pass by the useless and injurious substances. Now, where is the chemist who with such certainty, such power of discrimination, and knowledge of substances, can select from the inert clod the proper material? A chemist with such knowledge does not exist. Now, must you admit that the fibres possess as keen an understanding and as deep a knowledge of chemistry as the man who is versed in chemistry?"
"That would be manifest folly."
"Well," concluded Siegwart quietly, "if the vine-weevil weaves its wrapper, the spider its web, the bird builds its nest, and the beaver his house, they all do it in their way, as the root-fibres in theirs."
Richard remained silent, and they passed into the house.
Angela and her mother looked with astonishment and sympathy on their friend.