Plants and animals - perhaps even minerals and inanimate objects - were in partnership with humans. Moreover, they, not us, were the senior partners, as a result of their experience and their perfection. Plants, especially the psychoactive vines and fungi, has a great deal to teach humanity; in fact, if humanity hoped to evolve rapidly enough to keep philosophically apace with its technological advances, the expeditious and postverbal insights provided by psychotropic vegetation might well be its only salvation. In any case, the welfare and wishes of the inhuman must be taken into consideration by any civilization with legitimate chances for survival, although the issue was not merely pragmatic but moral and aesthetic.