Aristotle, and some 1,500 years later Aquinas, would call the vegetative soul the most basic aspect of the living hierarchy, with Plato too before them attributing the ‘appetitive’ aspect of the tripartite soul to the vegetative principle.  Iamblichus the Neoplatonist would say as well that the vegetative lies at the minimal extreme of life. The … Continue reading What to Make of the Flowers