10 THE STORY OF PLANT LIFE 



But there are grades between each of all these 

 similar types of activity or forms of materialisation 

 or matter. The mineral exhibits no semblance of 

 adaptation to external conditions, except that of 

 arrangement or association in relation to contact, or 

 contiguous mineral individuals. Its existence, in 

 cracks, veins, etc., is, moreover, entirely fortuitous. 

 In other cases it is not so, but dependent upon 

 certain conditions. 



A plant exhibits many of the forms of response to 

 stimuli that an animal does, but in one respect is 

 markedly different, being relatively fixed (like the 

 mineral which is entirely so), whilst an animal (in 

 most cases) can move. So that this introduces wide 

 differences in the behaviour of each. 



Coming to the special bearing of these stages in 

 each of the three main realms of nature, there are 

 certain resemblances between the character of the 

 movements (and other types of activity), or response 

 to stimuli, between plants and animals, that suggest 

 that the former, like the latter, possess a definite 

 consciousness. But what distinguishes the higher 

 animals (and so far as present knowledge goes, only 

 these, and not the lower types) is the possession of 

 s^//-consciousness. 



. The animal is essentially a liberator of energy, the 

 plant stores it up. This is a consequence of the 

 modes of nutrition which differ so widely, and the 

 entire dependence of the former upon the latter. 



Fundamentally the response of the sense-organs of 



