Frank became nervous.
"The common evasion of superficial examination!" cried he. "Man must be just even to the animals. Their works are artistic, intelligent, and considerate. Why then deny to animals those powers which operate with intelligence and reflection?"
"I do not for a moment dispute this power of the animals," replied the proprietor quickly.
"You find mind in the animals?" interrupted Frank hastily. "This conviction once reached, have you considered the consequences that follow?"—and he became more excited. "Have you considered that with this admission the whole world becomes a fabulous structure, without any higher object? If the spider is equal to man, then its torn web that flutters in the wind is worth as much as the crumbling fragments of art which remain from classic antiquity. Virtue, the careful restraining of the passions, is stark madness. The disgusting ape, lustful and brutish, is as good as the purest virgin who performs severe penances for her idle dreams. It is with justice that the criminal scoffs at the good as bedlamites who, with fanatical delusion, strive for castles in the air. Every outcast from society, sunk and saturated in the basest vices, is precisely as good as the purest soul and the noblest heart; for all distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, is destroyed."
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?"