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the countless ramifications of soul-life in these little creatures only 
through the acceptance of delicate differences of composition in 
their protoplasmic substance. 
Soul-activity in the broader sense is thus a universal property 
of all organised cells. But if that be the case, then we cannot 
entirely deny a soul-life even to A/ants. For even the lowest plants 
are simple cells; and in all the higher plants, as in the higher 
animals, the body consists of countless single cells. Only in the 
latter, the division of labour among the cells and the centralisation 
of the state have advanced much farther than in the former. The 
form of government in the animal body is the cell-monarchy; in 
the plant body, the cell-repudblic. As all the single cells in the 
plant body remain much more independent than in the animal 
body, the oneness of the soul meets us far less prominently in the 
former than in the latter. Only a few specially important plants, 
as the delicate sensitive plants, the fly-catching dionzea, form 
exceptions to this rule. In consequence of this, the soul-life of 
plants has been much less investigated than that of animals, and 
only a few naturalists have turned their attention to it. Among 
these should be named the acute founder of Psycho-physik, 
Professor Fechner of Leipsic, who has discussed the question of 
plant-soul in a series of ingenious writings, In other ways, the 
necessity of the acceptance of a plant-soul has also already been 
sufficiently established, so that we are not in a position to draw a 
sharp line between the animal and plant kingdoms. The one- 
celled infusoria or protozoa form the bridge which unites both 
great kingdoms of organic life into.one great whole. Only the 
ramifications of soul-activities are extraordinarily various, and in 
both kingdoms very different. 
No reproach has been more abundantly thrown out against 
the natural science of the day, and in particular against its most 
hopeful off-shoot—the development theory—than that it degrades 
living nature to a soulless mechanism, banishes everthing ideal 
from the world of reality, and destroys all poetry. We believe 
that our unprejudiced comparative and genealogical observation of 
soul-life invalidates this erroneous reproach. For according to our 
cet a eet et eee ee ati nee pee 
—————— eee ee, SSmCl ee ee LSS 
