First Physical Dissertation on the Bond Connecting Soul and Body

These things, then, concerning the Soul of the universe; having removed myself from my goal a little too verbosely, because the authors' commentaries stray into such diverse directions. Now, proceeding to examine the particulars in the World, I note still other things commonly signified under the name of soul; since the principles of life as well as of the senses and of reason usually pass under the same title of Soul, with at least this distinction attached, that with an addition taken from the effect, the Soul is called either Vegetative, or Sensitive, or Rational. Compare regarding the triple Soul HUNDESHAGEN, Physical Disputation on the Plurality of Souls really and substantially distinct in Man § 9 to the end (held at Jena, 1662) & ZEISOLDUS, On the Soul, Section I, Article III, Point 2.

From these species of souls, the vegetative is detected in those things which live, are nourished, grow, and multiply; and that alone belongs to plants and minerals. If you consider its nature more deeply, it is the same as the aether, or the aether itself. For Plants consist of fibers, or very thin little channels extended from the root to the top through all their branches, to the end that nutritional juice might be led through these passages in every direction. But that this might enter through the openings of the root, as if through a mouth, the air does by pressing from the outside through its own elasticity, and the juice having now entered, the aether, contained in other fibers or veins ascending in the same series between the former from the bottom of the plant to the top, mixes itself in; if the passage of which were to be blocked from the plant, it would shortly have to perish.