562 THE PLANT’S PLACE IN NATURE 
sisted upon by saying that organisms are alive? Doubtless 
he meant to do so; yet what did he mean by life without any 
trace of feeling? What sort of feeling can a sponge or a jelly- 
fish have that we must deny to a climbing-plant, or to a 
swimming-plant that moves toward the light? Our only 
evidence that the animal feels is that it responds by move- 
ments to certain stimuli. When we watch plants carefully 
we find that they also respond to similar stimuli. Thus we 
are left without any distinction between plants and animals; 
and since what ‘feeling’ stands for in animals is found in 
plants as well, it would seem that this same “feeling” might 
be what best distinguishes living from lifeless bodies, and 
so underlies the various manifestations of life. According to 
a view which we must examine more at length it is because 
of their purposeful activities that animals and plants are 
called living, and because of their coordinated parts, organic. 
All other bodies are then appropriately termed lifeless or 
inorganic. This modern view of Nature implies a revised 
classification which may be conveniently presented in the 
following tabular form. 
(Inorganic Realm or Mineral Kingdom. 
Nature 
| Organic Roath See 
_Animal Kingdom. 
198. The inorganic realm, it must be admitted, presents 
many points of fundamental similarity with the organic. 
Thus volume, mass, resistance, form, and all such physical 
properties are common to both realms. Furthermore, all 
the chemical elements found in animals or plants occur also 
in minerals, and often in the same combinations. Indeed 
many of the so-called “organic compounds” once supposed 
to be formed only within living bodies are now made in 
chemical laboratories by purely artificial means. Oil of 
wintergreen, indigo, and madder-red are examples we have 
already had occasion to notice. Many others might be added, 
including certain sugars. 
It has been urged that some day it may be possible to manufacture 
protoplasm artificially, and so break down the distinction now made 
