I. Man and the Surrounding World

The whole Earth must be imagined as a unified organism and all the plants as members of this common organism. The plants growing on the Earth are related to it more or less in the same way as the milk is related to the human being, or to the animal. When the calf sucks the milk of the cow, the cow experiences a certain feeling of well-being. The whole Earth has this same feeling when you pick a flower or cut a plant. Because what the Earth sends up to the Sun, what it sends out of itself, is in a different form that which lives in the milk. But if you tear out a plant with its root, it is the same as if you were to tear away a part of your body, or cut into your flesh. The Earth experiences something quite different when we cut a plant which is firmly rooted in the ground—then the Earth experiences well-being—but when we tear it out with its root it experiences something completely different. This should not be judged morally, but in accordance with the facts, and these are the facts.