American Gothic

Goethe, who described the development of a \”typical\” herbaceous plant in his Metamorphosis of Plants, was well aware of the special position trees hold in the plant world. In his work on morphology, he wrote in the chapter entitled: \”Our Objective Is Stated\”: If one looks at plants and animals in their most rudimentary stages, they are scarcely distinguishable from one another.

Such nuclear organisms – whether rigid, mobile, or semi- mobile – are just barely perceptible to our senses. Whether these first beginnings could be conclusively traced in opposing directions, to the plant through light and to the animal through darkness, I do not make bold to decide, although opinions and analogies are not lacking on this subject.

This much we can say: creatures, emerging gradually from a relationship in which they can scarcely distinguish between plant and animal, are perfected anti-thetically: the plant being ultimately glorified, fixed and rigid in the tree, and the animal, with utmost mobility and freedom, in mankind.