Mind in Plants
I
MAETERLINCK has entitled one of his charming essays ‘The Intelligence of the Flowers.’ It may seem like taking a long step beyond this to attribute mind to the whole plant kingdom. We human beings are inclined to regard the possession of mind as our own special prerogative and to grant grudgingly that a few of the higher animals exhibit forms of behavior which approach the intelligent. There are, indeed, many philosophers who deny that one can know the existence of any mind except one’s own. But once admit that other men may share this great possession, the door is wide open, and the path leads thence down through vertebrates and invertebrates, onecelled animals, and many-celled plants, till who can tell where one may stop and say, ‘Beyond this there is no consciousness.’
The essayist has applied the term intelligence to those curious and wonderful adaptations which, in plants, promote the reproduction and distribution of species. Conspicuous among these are the marvelous contrivances and processes by which cross-fertilization is effected, and the dispersal of fruits and seeds by wind, waves, animals, and other agents promoted. But this use of the term is open to criticism, for such adaptations of form and function as those cited are examples of the intelligence of Nature rather than of flowers. By the student of behavior or of comparative psychology, intelligence is to-day defined as ‘ the power of learning by individual experience.’ Maeterlinck himself warns us that his essay should not be considered a scientific treatise. His choice of terms, however, strongly emphasizes the difference between the popular and the scientific conception of the meaning of words, and the misunderstandings to which this difference gives rise.
Perhaps nowhere are these misunderstandings, because of difference in the usage of words, more evident than in the case of such terms as mind, soul, and consciousness. The average man boasts that he has a soul and that he himself is master of it; insists, often pugnaciously, that his favorite horse and dog have minds and are capable of intelligent, and even of reasoned, behavior. But if you allude to the consciousness of the carrot, he feels that you have entered the realm of the fantastic, and refuses to discuss the matter in any save a humorous way. It behooves us, therefore, to inquire carefully into the meaning which the scientist gives to these words, and the ways in which he uses them.
E. B. Titchener, one of our most eminent psychologists, defines mind as ‘the sum-total of human experience considered as dependent upon the experiencing person.’ He rejects a use of the term consciousness in the sense of a ‘mind’s awareness of itself’ as being not only unnecessary but also misleading, ‘unnecessary because, as we shall see later, the awareness is a matter of observation of the same general kind as observation of the external world; it is misleading because it suggests that mind is a personal being instead of a stream of processes.’ He therefore takes ‘mind and consciousness to mean the same thing.’
Later in the same discussion he says, ‘If, however, we attribute minds to other human beings, we have no right to deny them to the higher animals. These animals are provided with a nervous system of the same pattern as ours; their conductor behavior, under circumstances that would arouse certain feelings in us, often seems to express, quite definitely, similar feelings in them. Surely we must grant that the highest vertebrates, mammals and birds, have minds. Indeed, it is difficult to limit mind to the animals that possess even a rudimentary nervous system; for the creatures that rank still lower in the scale of life manage to do, without a nervous system, practically everything that their superiors do by its assistance. The range of mind thus appears to be as wide as the range of animal life.
‘The plants, on the other hand, appear to be mindless. Many of them are endowed with what we may term sense-organs, that is, organs differentiated to receive certain forms of stimulus,— pressure, impact, light, and so forth. These organs are analogous in structure to the sense-organs of the lower animal organisms; thus plant “ eyes” have been found, which closely resemble rudimentary animal eyes, and which — if they belonged to animals — might mediate the perception of light: so that the development of the plant-world has evidently been governed by the same general laws of adaptation to environment that have been at work in the animal kingdom. But we have no evidence of plant-consciousness.’
We see, therefore, that the scientists themselves sometimes hesitate to follow their statements and assumptions to their logical conclusions. If plants possess rudimentary eyes so similar in structure to those of animals that ‘if they belonged to animals they might mediate the perception of light,’ why should we not assume that they really serve as eyes? Such an assumption seems natural enough, unless, perchance, it can be shown that animals and plants are essentially different in nature, — a view, however, which all the biological work of recent years has tended to refute.
II
Primitive men evidently regarded plants as living, acting, and feeling creatures. A poetical expression of this is found in the dryads who were part of each tree, living and dying with it. The Russian and the Norwegian folksongs are permeated by the same idea. Aristotle, however, announced that while both animals and plants have souls, plants lack sensation or feeling. The pith he assumed to be the seat of the soul of plants and the controlling centre of physiological processes. In the era of Linnæus a somewhat different idea prevailed. It finds expression in his phrase: ‘Stones grow; plants grow and live; animals grow, live, and feel.’
It is safe to say that Linnæus did not think of plants as possessing souls, or minds, or any form of consciousness. Under the influence of this eminent systematic botanist, the study of plants was restricted to collecting, drying, and pressing specimens, and to wrangling over names. It is only within the last century that students of plants have freed themselves from the influence of Linnæus, and have begun to study the complex processes of life as they occur in the plant world. Experimentation has largely replaced collecting and preserving. This study of plants as living things has gradually broken down the Aristotelian boundary wall between animals and plants. And from the ruins of the wall has arisen a common biology which is quite as much concerned with the likenesses between animals and plants as with their differences.
The discovery that the unit of structure, the cell, is strikingly similar in plants and animals was one of the first great advances in this common biology. The cell indeed has been found to possess almost identical properties in the two kingdoms. ‘ Living protoplasm,’ exclaims the noted botanist Haberlandt, ‘whether its origin be animal or plant, hides in itself all the great riddles of life, whose solution we are always joyfully, but with varying success, striving for.’
A second important step in the establishing of a strictly scientific botany resulted from the recognition that the power of intelligent movement, which previously had been regarded as an attribute of animals alone, exists equally among the lower plants. This discovery was made with the aid of the microscope, which revealed to the observer myriads of tiny plants, creeping, crawling, whirling, with a rapidity and complexity of motion equal to that of animals. Bacteria, Diatoms, Desmids, and the swarmspores of many algæ and fungi, were discovered to be capable of extreme and varied activity.
Yet another step forward was taken when leading botanists came to admit the existence of irritability in certain plants.
Says Haberlandt, ‘The existence of living substance is so sharply distinguished by no fundamental property as by irritability. Not only animal but plant protoplasm is fitted to receive different external changes as stimuli. When the sensitive plant at a rough touch lowers its petioles and clasps its leaflets together; when a stem, illuminated on one side, turns toward the source of light; or when bacteria swarm together upon a piece of nutrient substance, we have to do with irritable movements which are fully analogous to those which play such an important rôle in the life of animals.
‘The irritability of animals has been regarded for ages as indicative of sensation and perception. Nothing can deter us, once the similarity of sensory movements in the animal and the plant kingdoms is fully recognized, from ascribing to plants both sensation and perception.’
It is interesting that this view of the plant world should have been prophesied long ago by Fechner the philosopher, in his book entitled Nanna, oder das Seelenleben der Pflanzen, wherein, to quote Haberlandt again, ‘the most delicate phantasies of the “ Märchenerzähler ” twine like blossoming branches around the strong scaffolding of scientific thought.’ Fechner ascribed to plants a richly developed sensory life. He would have taken keen satisfaction could he have lived to see the confirmation of his views which has resulted from the studies of the structure and behavior of plants made during the last twenty years.
III
In applying the term ‘mind’ to plants, we should of course note that we are dealing with extremely elementary or simple mental processes. We have no reason to assume, or even to suspect, that such complex experiences as our human perceptions, emotions, and thoughts, exist in plants. The psychologist whom we have already quoted presents three classes of ele-mentary mental processes: sensations, images, and affections. Of these several simple varieties of consciousness, sensations are the only ones which we can safely attribute to plants.
By the work of many observers, and especially by that of the ingenious physiologist Jagadis Chunder Bose, it has been established, recently, that changes occurring about plants may act as stimuli, and thus, through the releasing of vital energy, occasion forms of response which are no less interestingly adaptive than are those exhibited by animals. By means of marvelously sensitive devices, the essential feature of which is the ‘optical lever,’ Bose has been enabled to detect movements in response to stimulation in many plants, organs, and tissues. It has also been amply demonstrated that, in plants, as in animals, the organ which responds to a stimulus may be at a considerable distance from the place at which the stimulus is received.
Darwin it was who noted that a root placed horizontally receives the stimulus of gravity in the root-cap, while the bending which causes the root to turn downward occurs at some distance from the cap. It is evident that this spatial separation of point of stimulus and point of response indicates the existence of something similar to nerve-impulses, and indeed most students of the subject freely admit that plants exhibit certain physiological processes analogous to the so-called conduction of impulses by nerves. In some plants this conduction is pretty obviously a purely mechanical process. This is the case in the well-known sensitive plant, Mimosa pudica, wherein responsiveness to stimuli or sensitivity was first observed and is to-day most widely known.
The pressure of fluid in a peculiar system of tubes conveys the effect of a touch or jar to distant parts of the sensitive plant, and these, in their turn, so act as to occasion movement. Thus a light touch at one point causes a very pronounced movement of the leaves of mimosa. And by striking a group of these plants with a stick, one may cause a wave of response which resembles the effect of a strong wind on a held of grain. For the majority of plants, however, it has been discovered that conduction occurs in the living substance of the cell in which delicate threads of protoplasm, extending through the boundary walls of the cell, form continuous paths suggestive of the form of nerve-fibres in animals.
But even after the process of sensory response and transmission of impulses had been thoroughly established, plant physiologists were loath to believe in the existence of special sense-organs for the reception of stimuli in plants. For a time, it was thought that their sensitivity was merely an expression of a capacity given to all living cells. It was Haberlandt who, on the assumption that division of labor is the rule in connection with the varied processes of both plants and animals, undertook a thorough search for definite senseorgans.
As a result of this search, he was able to distinguish and to describe in detail three degrees of complexity in sensory development. There is, first, a generally distributed irritability or sensibility to stimuli. This is a condition to which the term sense-organ does not strictly apply. As a result of its diffused or general irritability, a plant may respond to a stimulus in much the same way wherever it happens to act. A more complex condition is that in which the stimulus-receiving organs are situated in a particular portion or tissue of the plant. Thus it has been found that the outer layer of cells or epidermis of many plants serves the protective function, but is also sensitive to light and to contact. Finally, the third degree of specialization is exhibited in plants which possess certain cells, parts of cells, or cell-groups, which, by their form, are highly adapted for the reception of changes which may act as stimuli. These latter structures are truly sense-organs, and they are in a variety of ways comparable with the sense-organs of animals.
There are known, in animals, special organs for the reception of a great variety of stimuli. Thus we recognize organs for the reception of heat and cold, light, sound, contact, pressure, and a variety of chemical changes. But in the plant, the range of special senseorgans is more narrowly limited. We know, to-day, of special organs in certain plants, for the reception of mechanical stimuli, such as contact, friction, pressure, shock, or jars; for the influence of gravity or the pull of the earth on the plant; and for certain kinds of light. It is practically certain that plants are affected in varied ways by changes in temperature and in chemical conditions, yet no special organs for the reception of these stimuli have been discovered.
The principle of construction which appears in the sense-organs of plants is that of an outer stationary layer of protoplasm, which lines the sensitive cell, and of varied and peculiar contrivances which limit and direct the stimulus to the sensitive portion of the cell. Precisely what takes place in the living substance of the sensitive plantcell, we do not know, but a series of processes, supposedly chemical in nature, occur, the last of which is a motor event which is appropriately described as a response to the stimulus which initiated the chain of events.
There are three kinds of organs for the reception of mechanical stimuli. They are known as sensitive spots, sensitive papillæ, and sensitive hairs or bristles.
Sensitive spots were first observed by Pfeffer on the tendrils of the family of vines called Cucurbitaceœ. This family includes such plants as the cucumber, melon, squash, gourds, and pumpkins. Near the tip and on the concave or under side of the tendrils of these vines, Pfeffer located highly sensitive areas. They proved to be thin spots in the outer wall of cells, filled with protoplasm in which appear crystals of calcium oxalate.
The so-called papillæ are projections of the cells which form the outer layer or epidermis of the plant, are thin-walled, and filled with living substance. They are found on such organs as the filaments of various flowers, and to the observer who is familiar with senseorgans of animals, their structure is highly suggestive of a receptive function. When touched, they cause a rapid bending of the entire stamen of the flower, and thus the pollen is scattered over the intruding cause of stimulation. This cause, to be sure, is frequently an active insect which, in turn, serves as a carrier of the pollen to other flowers. In a most interesting way, the flower is itself thus enabled, by responding to mechanical stimuli, to further the process of cross-fertilization.
The sensitive hairs or bristles may be simple or complex, constituted by one or by many cells. A typical example of this sort of sense-organ is the bristle of the cushion-like enlargement of that portion of the leaf of the sensitive plant Mimosa pudica which is the point of attachment to the stem. This is knowm, technically, as the primary pulvinus of the leaf. On this cushionlike structure appear bristles, the bases of which are bedded in the substance of the pulvinus, literal ‘ thorns in the flesh.’ Each bristle consists of a number of thick-walled cells, but toward the tip it tapers to a single cell. When such a bristle is touched, the stimulus is immediately transmitted to the cells of the cushion, or pulvinus, and changes therein cause the petiole, or supporting structure of the leaf, to drop. The transmission of the stimulus to the pulvini of the leaflets causes them to fold together. Thus, in an instant and as the result of contact with a single bristle, the plant folds up as though to protect itself from further stimulation. Most interesting in this whole response is the surprising rapidity with which the apparently trivial stimulation of a single bristle at the base of a leaf is transmitted through the plant and effects the general response.
Yet other excellent examples of the response of plants to mechanical stimulation are furnished by the sundew and the Venus fly-trap. When an insect alights upon an open leaf of the sundew, its movements are impeded by a sticky secretion, and in its struggles to escape, it so stimulates the leaf that the glandular hairs which cover the surface of the leaf, and the edges of the leaf itself, slowly close over it and imprison it. The nutritive portions of its body are thereupon digested by the secretions of other glandular hairs. After this process is complete, the leaf reopens and the dry shell of the insect is carried away by the wind. The response of the Venus fly-trap is more startling, for by it the insect is suddenly entrapped. Sensitive bristles on the leaves are responsible for the reaction. It is when the insect comes in contact with one or more of these bristles that the leaves suddenly close. Thus, in the case of both Drosera, or, as it is popularly known, sundew, and Dionæa, or the Venus fly-trap, prey is captured as a result of response to stimulation of the plant by the illfated insect.
There is another group of responses, complex, and for a long time imperfectly understood, which demands examination. Since so many plants are stationary, spending most of their lives rooted to one spot, it is essential that they be able so to orient themselves as to obtain those conditions most favorable for growth and reproduction. One portion of the plant should reach down into the soil to anchor it firmly and to draw therefrom water and nutrient substances. Other portions should spread out where they may obtain air and light. The discovery of the mechanism whereby these adjustments to the environment are achieved is peculiarly interesting.
Early in the last century, experiment revealed that when a seedling is placed horizontally, the tip of its root gradually turns downward, whereas the stem of the plant turns upward. The former responds positively to the influence of gravity, seeking the earth; the other, negatively, avoiding the earth and seeking the sunlight. If the same kind of seedling be rotated slowly on a wheel so that all parts are in like manner and in turn subjected to the action of gravity, these bendings do not occur.
Charles Darwin, about the year 1881, called attention to the fact that sensitiveness to the influence of gravity was apparently limited in the seedling to the central portion of the rootcap which covers the tip of the root, although the response to stimulation by gravity occurs as the result of growth in a region of the root at some distance back of the tip. This region is that of most active growth in the root.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, largely as the result of certain zoölogical discoveries, an important step toward the explanation of the bending of root and stem in seedlings was taken. Zoölogists had observed in various animals little organs constructed like sense-organs which were at first supposed to be organs of hearing. They consist, in essence, of a fluid-filled sack, the walls of which are formed of living cells. In the fluid of this sack are suspended crystals or masses of inorganic material. The sack is lined with hairs or bristles, and as the crystals or groups of crystals move about as the result of changes in the position of the animal, they come in contact with these hairs and apparently stimulate them. These organs, at first called otocysts or earsacks, were subsequently named statocysts, and the inorganic masses, statoliths.
It is now definitely known that the statocyst is an organ, sensitive to changes in the position of an animal’s body and capable of so controlling the muscles as to maintain the normal position. Thus if such a creature as the crayfish be turned on its back or side, the unusual position so stimulates the hairs of the statocyst that righting movements are set up.
Two botanists, Haberlandt and Nemeç, working independently, were struck by the similarity between the structure of the statocysts of animals and that of cells in the roots of plants. For in certain of the cells of plants they discovered starch grains suggestive of the statoliths found in animals. It was not difficult for them to imagine these starch grains acting as stimulating mechanisms and determining the direction of movement of root or stem. Indeed it is now generally believed that gravity, acting upon these solid particles in certain cells, so stimulates the protoplasm of those cells as to cause more rapid growth in some regions of the plant than in others. It is this unequal or asymmetric growth, occurring often at some distance from the point of stimulation, which causes the root to bend downward and the stem to bend upward.
Apropos of this conception, Darwin himself said, ‘It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the tip of the radicle thus endowed, and having the power of directing the movements of the adjoining parts, acts like the brain of one of the lower animals; the brain being seated within the anterior end of the body, receiving impressions from the sense-organs, and directing the several movements.’
These starch grains are found in both stems and leaves. They are stored in cells which form a layer of the parenchyma in leaves and a hollow cylinder in stems. In these positions, starch is found even when it is entirely absent in other portions of the plant. It is significant that in those few cases in which plant-roots do not respond to the influence of gravity, starch grains are lacking. Altogether, the view that these particles are chiefly responsible for certain of the important directive movements in plants is well supported by facts.
IV
But there is yet another environmental agency which obviously has much to do with controlling the movements of plants. This is light. It is a matter of common observation that in response to changes in the amount of light, certain flowers open and close and many leaves change position. Thus the appearance of many plants changes completely with the fall of night. It is also generally known that one-sided illumination has its marked effects. Plants in a sunny window need to be turned from time to time if they are to be prevented from becoming asymmetric.
In many cases it seems as if the entire plant were sensitive to light. An instance of this is found in the so-called sleep movements of plants, where the leaves or flowers close and droop at the approach of night. But there are other cases in which the stimulation seems to act only upon certain portions of the organism. Thus it has been pointed out that in the leaves of some plants the outer wall of the cells of the upper epidermis arches outward, thus making of each cell a plano-convex lens. The light is concentrated by this means upon the middle field of the inner wall of each cell where lies the sensitive protoplasm which receives the stimulus.
In other plants a single cell of this epidermis here and there is specialized in form to receive the stimulus. It has been found possible to print on photographic paper through the carefully removed epidermis of a leaf. The resulting print shows plainly dark spots where the light has been concentrated by the lens-like action of the cells.
There is much discussion concerning the response of plants to light, and many important matters are still unsettled. In a recent book devoted to a study of Light and the Behavior of Organisms, Mast has successfully presented both facts and controversies. Thus he observes with reference to the general regulatory value of light to plants, that leaves for the most part tend to take a position which facilitates the processes of food-making, and that other portions of plants likewise assume what is evidently the most favorable position for growth and reproduction. The effect of light is so to regulate the responses of a plant that it more perfectly adapts itself to its immediate environmental conditions. Thus it is noted that in intense light certain plant structures, the chloroplasts which contain the green coloring matter, assume a position in the cell parallel with the rays of light, so as to receive as little of the light as possible. Certain leaves, under intense illumination, turn so that the edge of the blade is directed toward the light.
In addition to their simple sensory responses, many examples of which have been presented, plants exhibit certain other forms or aspects of behavior which are of psychological interest. Among other things it has been demonstrated that the relation of stimulation to response, at any rate in certain cases, conforms to the WeberFechner law. According to this law, a certain definite relation holds between increase of strength of stimulus and appreciable change in response. It has been demonstrated, also, with plants as with animals, that a stimulus too weak to induce a response becomes effective upon repetition. This is commonly known as the phenomenon of summation of stimuli. Fatigue as the result of stimulation is exhibited by plants as well as by animals.
The behavior of plants is also variable and shows definite relations both to the internal conditions of the plant itself and the various aspects of environment. There are indeed innumerable instances of variation in response to change in the amount and character of the stimulus. Thus the seedling which bends toward a moderately strong light bends in the opposite direction if the light becomes intense. Likewise, it has been noted that many free-moving plants which swim toward a source of light of low intensity swim away from a stronger light. Such reactions as these have been observed in various marine and fresh-water algæ, in diatoms, in the tendrils of Ampelopsis and Vitis. They are obviously of importance in the life of the plant, for they tend to keep it in those conditions which are favorable.
The following quotation from Mast calls attention to an aspect of the modifiability of behavior in plants which is worthy of careful investigation: ‘It has long been known that changes in light cause daily periodic movements in plants, the so-called sleep movements of leaves and flowers, and that these movements continue for some time if the plant is kept in continuous illumination. They are at first pronounced, both in constant light and in darkness . . . and they continue to be perceptible until after the lapse of from four to eight days.’
V
Reactions to light are not the only ones, however, in which modifiability occurs when conditions of environment change. The sensitive plant, which ordinarily closes its leaves at the slightest jar, will, if subjected to the continual jarring of a train or wagon, after a time open its leaves and let them remain open. The leaf-petioles of Clematis vitalba twine around any support and perform the function of tendrils. One experimenter made fast the stems of the vine, so that the clinging of the petioles was rendered superfluous and they then did not react at all. When the same stems were again freed and allowed to wave in the wind, the petioles at once took hold and began to twine. Limnophila heterophylla, an amphibious plant of the tropics, has finely divided leaves under the surface of the water, entire ones above it. If a stem of entire leaves is sunk beneath the surface, it develops side branches bearing finely divided leaves.
Another case of adaptation is that of the Russian teasel (Dipsacus laciniatus) which grows on the dry steppes of Eastern Europe. Every pair of the leaves grows together around the stem, forming a little cup which the rain fills. When the supply of water in the earth is not adequate, the plant develops suction-cells in the bottom of this cup which absorb the stored-up water. Moreover, it also sends out little protoplasmic hairs which absorb nutriment from the bodies of small insects which become drowned in the water of the cups. No other members of the teasel or thistle family have such contrivances, which seem to have been developed only as an ‘occasional expedient.’ May not this be considered an example of an instinct?
We speak of the bird’s song in the springtime, of the display of plumage and the various antics in the courtship of birds, as expressions of the sex-instincts. What should we say of the following series of events in the life of the little water-plant, Vallisneria spiralis ? The stamens and pistils are borne in separate flowers, entirely submerged in the water. The female flower is attached to a long stem which is coiled tightly. When the flowers are ripe, this stem uncoils and the flower rises to the surface of the water. The male flower has no such coil, so it simply breaks away from its stem, rises and floats on the surface. Pollination is effected there, whereupon the male flower floats away, withers, and dies. The stem of the female flower coils up again, drawing it down under the water, where the fruit is perfected and the seed sown.
Chemical processes? Yes, but how do they differ from the instinctive act of an animal? To say that the instinctconsciousness is lacking is beside the mark, for such a statement can rest only on the assumption that plants are unconscious. The unprejudiced observer must admit that instinctive activities appear in both plants and animals, and like similar responses to stimuli possess essentially the same characteristics in both. As for the instinct-consciousness, if the observer considers fairly the evidences upon which his admission of consciousness in animals rests, he will find it easier to acknowledge affective consciousness in plants than to deny it or to disprove its existence.
It is not necessary to adduce further illustrations of the activities of plants. Let us review those which have been offered in their relations to the subject of consciousness. The whole argument rests, of course, on analogy. Those philosophers who maintain that we can know or affirm nothing of any consciousness except our own, individually, will deny the possibility of mind in animals or plants. Yet most people are willing to admit that other human beings have minds similar to theirs because their words and actions are similar to their own. It is perfectly true, however, that actions speak louder than words, and on that principle, the way in which animals ‘even down to the lowest forms’ meet the situations of their lives, gives us cause to believe that they, too, are conscious. Yet if the lowest animals, why not the lowest plants?
The theory of evolution postulates a common or at least a similar origin for both. Many forms have in some measure the characteristics of both animals and plants, so that it is hard to decide under which head they are to be classified.
Furthermore, we have seen that plants, like animals, possess at least the simplest psychic powers, those of sensation and perception. They are capable of perceiving stimuli, having for that purpose, in many cases, senseorgans similar to those of animals. They are able to transmit these stimuli to all parts of the plant body. They respond appropriately to these stimuli, by means of movements, either ‘spontaneous’ or effected by growth. They are capable of varying and modifying these responses to a considerable extent. The relation of stimulus and response follows certain psycho-physical laws which have also been worked out for animals, namely, the WeberFechner law, and the law of summation. They perform a relatively complex series of acts adapted to a definite future end, a primitive form of instinct.
Whether further observation, experimentation, or analysis will reveal evidences of the higher forms of mental life in plants,— imagination, emotion, ideas, — who can say?