Flora Unveiled

Behind the Green Door j 383

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In the Preface to L’Homme Plant, Mettrie insists that his transformation of people into

plants is not merely “a story such as Ovid might have told,” but is based on the discovery

of the “singular analogy between the plant and animal kingdoms.” We have only begun to

glimpse the principle of uniformity, Mettrie asserts, so we are still not sure how far to apply

it. “One should never force nature,” he cautions, because nature can and does “stray from the

laws she favors most.” To determine where analogy is appropriate, he concludes, one should

begin by comparing the parts of plants with those of animals.

Mettrie begins with the flow of sap, which he considers analogous to the circulation of

the blood. “The lungs are our leaves,” says Mettrie. “They do for us what leaves do for plants.

... Plants have branches to enlarge their lungs so they can get more air.” This statement was

no doubt derived from Vegetable Staticks (1727) by Stephen Hales, an English clergyman who

applied the methods of Harvey to study the ascent of sap in plants. In addition, writes Mettrie,

the “Harveys of botany” have shown that plants have the same types of structures— veins, vessels,

and capillaries— for the flow of sap as animals have for the flow of blood. He also asserts that heat

does for plants what the heart does for animals— it drives the movement of the sap:  “this fire,

I say, is the heart that makes the juices circulate in the tubes of plants, which perspire like men.”

Next, Mettrie compares female and male flowers of dioecious plants to the reproductive

structures of men and women. He compares the nectary to a breast:

As flowers have leaves or petals, we can view our arms and legs as similar parts. The

nectarium, which is the reservoir of honey in certain flowers, such as the tulip and

the rose, is like the breast that contains milk in the female plant of our species when

the male makes it come. The breast in our species is double, and is seated at the lateral

base of each petal or arm on the large pectoral muscle.

The pistil, says Mettrie, is analogous to the uterus, vagina, and vulva:

One can regard the womb of a virgin or rather of a woman not yet pregnant or, if

you wish, the ovary, as an unfertilized seed. The stylus in a woman is the vagina. The

vulva or mount of Venus and the odor that exhales from the glands of these parts cor-

respond to the stigma. The uterus, vagina, and vulva together form the pistil, which is

what modern botanists call the female parts of the plant.

In men, on the other hand, the “stamen is rolled into a cylindrical tube, the rod,” and

“sperm is our fertilizing pollen.” According to the Linnaean system, men, having only one rod,

belong to the Monandria, while women, having only one vagina, belong to the Monogynia.

Humankind as a whole belongs to the class Dioeciae. Mettrie goes on to compare the details

of fertilization in plants and animals according to the limited knowledge then available. Like

Vaillant, he has great fun equating the explosive release of pollen from anthers with ejaculation:

The ejaculation of plants lasts only a second or two. But does ours last longer? I think

not, although continence leads to some variations depending on how much sperm is

stored in the seminal vesicles. An ejaculation is completed in a single expiration, so it

has to be short. Pleasures lasting too long might kill us. Then, because of lack of air

or breath, each animal would give life at the expense of its own, and would truly die

of pleasure.