MARTINEAU AND MATERIALISM. 145 



for a ncofative conclusion is the absence of those outward manifesta- 

 tions from which feeling is usually inferred. But even these are not 

 entirely absent. In the greenhouses of Kew we may see that a leaf 

 can close, in response to a proper stimulus, as promptly as the human 

 fingers themselves ; and while there Dr. Hooker will tell us of the won- 

 drous fly-catching and fly-devouring power of the Dionsea. No man 

 can say that the feelings of the animal are not represented by a drow- 

 sier consciousness in the vegetable world. At all events, no line has 

 ever been drawn between the conscious and the unconscious ; for the 

 vegetable shades into the animal by such fine gradations, that it is 

 impossible to say wliere the one ends and the otH^r begins. 



In all such inquiries we are necessarily limited by our own powers : 

 we observe what our senses, ai*med with the aids furnished by science, 

 enable us to observe ; nothing more. The evidences as to conscious- 

 ness in the vegetable world depend wholly upon our capacity to observe 

 and weigh them. Alter the capacity, and the evidence would alter 

 too. Would that which to us is a total absence of any manifestation 

 of consciousness be the same to a being with our capacities indefinitely 

 multiplied ? To such a being I can imagine not only the vegetable, 

 but the mineral world, responsive to the proper irritants ; the response 

 difiering only in degree from those exaggerated manifestations which, 

 in virtue of their grossness, aj^peal to our weak powers of observation. 



Our conclusions, however, must be based, not on powers that we 

 can imagine, but upon those that we possess. What do tliey reveal? 

 As the earth and atmosphere ofier themselves as the nutriment of the 

 vegetable world, so does the latter, which contains no constituent not 

 found in inorganic nature, ofier itself to the animal world. Mixed 

 with certain inorganic substances water, for example the vegetable 

 constitutes, in the long-run, the sole sustenance of the animal. Ani- 

 mals may be divided into two classes, the first of which can utilize 

 the vegetable world immediately, having chemical forces strong 

 enough to cope with its most refractory parts ; the second class use 

 the vegetable world mediately ; that is to say, after its finer por- 

 tions have been extracted and stored up by the first. But in neither 

 class have we an atom newly created. The animal world is, so to say, 

 a distillation through the vegetable world from inorganic nature. 



From this point of A^iew all three worlds would constitute a unity, 

 in which I picture life as immanent everywhere. Nor am I anxious 

 to shut out the idea that the life here spoken of may be but a subor- 

 dinate part and function of a higher life, as the living, moving blood 

 is subordinate to the livino; man. I resist no such idea as lono- as it 

 is not dogmatically imposed. Left for the human mind freely to op- 

 erate upon, the idea has ethical vitality ; but, stiffened into a dogma, 

 tlie inner force disappears, and the outward yoke of a usurping hier- 

 archy takes its place. 



The problem before us is, at all events, capable of definite state- 



TOL. Yin. 10 



