| Illustrations | |
| Preface | |
| Acknowledgments | |
| Introduction | 3 |
| Ch. 1 | Stoic Seeds of Virtue and Sparks of Divinity | 21 |
| Ch. 2 | The Challenge to Christian Theologians | 35 |
| Ch. 3 | Medieval and Renaissance Vegetative Images | 57 |
| Ch. 4 | Ficino: Neo-Platonic Ascent through Love and Education | 81 |
| Ch. 5 | Italian Renaissance Humanism: Rebirth and Flowering of the Seeds of Virtue and Knowledge | 96 |
| Ch. 6 | Vegetative Language of Virtue and Vice in Discourses on the Dignity or Depravity of Humankind | 119 |
| Ch. 7 | Northern Renaissance Humanism: Cultivating and Transplanting the Seeds of Virtue and Knowledge | 155 |
| Ch. 8 | Bodin: "All the Ancient Hebrews and Academics Have Held" | 181 |
| Ch. 9 | Montaigne: Seeds of Virtue in Peasants and Amerindians | 206 |
| Ch. 10 | Charron: Seeds of Virtue for Virtue's Own Sake | 223 |
| Epilogue | 238 |
| Notes | 257 |
| Index Nominum | 349 |
| Index Rerum | 361 |
