24Q DR. CARUS ON THE KINGDOMS OF NATURE, 



leaves and flowers being particularly capable of secretion and ex- 

 piration, but less fit for absorption. Polarity is therefore the cause 

 which brings the sap into motion by reciprocal attraction and repul- 

 sion from the root to the leaves and flowers, and from the leaves and 

 flowers again to the root : a motion on which, moreover, the physical 

 powers — which, as the condition of both these parts, we have named 

 vegetative poles, namely the powers of light and gravitation — must have 

 a most decided influence ; since, for instance, it is a well-known fact, 

 that the perspiration of plants is very diflerent according to the degrees 

 in which they are exposed or withdrawn from the light of the sun. 

 But besides those active properties which contribute to the organic 

 formation of plants, some of them possess a peculiar mobility, which 

 seems to arise from real sensibility, and at the first glance presents a 

 perfect line of demarcation between the vegetable and inorganic bodies. 

 •In order to have a clear insight into this fact, it is necessary to fix our 

 idea of the word sensibility, as that which we ^yould be understood to 

 convey most correctly, if we say that it consists in the cimnge operated 

 by outward or inward circumstances in the feelings of a being conscioits 

 that it exists as a unity; consequently if we deny sensibility to the 

 stone or the mineral, it is not because such a body is not subject to the 

 most various agitations and changes, but because it is merely a member 

 of a higher unity, and in itself is to be considered as an individual, not 

 as a true unity. In regard to the plant we may say that it has become an 

 organic unity; but on account of the dualism (see p. 235.) prevailing in its 

 totality, and its being therefore bound as it were to the external world, we 

 may with safety deny that it is conscious of its own unity ; for in order 

 to have self-consciousness, or an internal perception of unity, there 

 must be, not merely that ideal unity which belongs to organized beings 

 in general, but that real manifestation of unity which arises from the 

 continual action and reaction of all the organs and an organic centre. 

 But such action and reaction are not to be found in the plant, in Avhich 

 each bud may be considered as a whole ; so that this real unity, as 

 we shall hereafter see, is possible only in the animal, in which the 

 organs are connected with a unity by means of the vascular and 

 nervous systems. But if we cannot suppose plants to be possessed 

 of sensibility, how can we account for their movements towards the 

 light, the shrinking of the sensitive plant from the touch, the closing 

 of the Dionaea by mechanical irritation, or the inclining of the stamina 

 towards the stigma, and the regular embracing of extraneous bodies, 

 and in definite directions, by the creeping plants, &c.? In our opinion all 

 these phaenomena are to be accounted for in the same way as the rota- 

 tion of the earth, the motion of falling bodies, the oscillation of the 

 sea in its ebbing and flowing, the attraction and repulsion of the cork 

 baUs in the electrometer ; that is to say, we think that they are entirely 

 the effects of external disposing causes, and therefore the consequence 



