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Show 249. of the life of plants - their hopes and fears, pains and enjoyments!" Thus he indicated his trust that plants would be worth knowing and loving. Late in life, he wrote unashamedly in his journal: It is my faith that every flower enjoys the air it breathes. Wordsworth, Professors Wagner, French, and Darwin claim that plants have minds, are conscious of their existence, feel pain and have memories. This surprising statement indicates that he had found a way to reconcile his essentially pantheistic faith with Darwinian theory. Such a divergent group of men, all testifying to Muir's own faith! One wonders at first whether Muir hadn't simply avoided the implications of evolution. I do not believe that was the case. Apparently he had weathered the Darwinian age without losing his mystical certainty. But during the seventies he rarely made such bold statements in public. He knew that he would provoke laughter rather than belief. A certain sense of embarrassment attends pronouncement of faith in Nature. In The Sun Also Rises, which takes its name and theme from Ecclesiastes, Hemingway's characters fear to be caught "talking rot." Bill Gorton, a "nature writer," parodies himself by claiming that he is only a purveyor of stuffed animals. And when he expresses a real pleasure in the mountains, he can only do it jokingly, because he is ashamed of being soft-headed. He is deep in a Darwinian crisis: "Let us not doubt, brother. Let us not pry into holy |