THEIR LIFE AND AFFINITY. 253 



chical life* — (wherefore the doctrine of Stahl, that the soul forms its 

 own body, if properly understood, is very admissible, — and we hope 

 soon to have the opportunity more fully to develop these views, for 

 which we have not space here, and to confirm the above propositions 

 by more convincing proofs. For the present we have only to observe 

 in general, having already spoken of the manner in which animal re- 

 action depends on muscular motion (see p. 237), how far the more pre- 

 cise independence and the more certain self-consciousness of the animal 

 give rise to the individual forms of sensation. 



In the plant, in which irritation causes re-action at the point where it 

 acts, and the single parts of which are independent, but not the whole, 

 irritability (belonging to all the parts) must be general ; and this gene- 

 ral irritability (raised into a sensation only through the relation of each 

 irritating action to the whole,) is possessed by the animal in common 

 Avith the plant, and it is therefore included in the comprehensive term 

 feeling. But since in the animal the sensation of each individual part 

 is related to the whole, this sensation can be concentrated and particu- 

 larly developed, on certain individual points, without injury, or rather 

 with advantage to the whole ; wherefore we see that the different sides 

 of perception turned toward the outer m orld, correspond in number 

 with the different organic systems turned toward the outer world, and 

 with the qualitative influences of various kinds acting upon the organ- 

 ism ; so that if mere Feeling gives us only a knowledge of the state of 

 our own organism, the individual senses of hearing, seeing, smelling, 

 tasting, touching, &c. afford us a clearer consciousness of the external 

 world, through a local alteration of our own condition. 



If in closing these observations, intended to show the progressive 

 development of animal life out of the life of the lower kingdoms of 

 nature, we look to the changes which animal life operates upon them, 

 facts present themselves worthy of the most serious consideration. We 

 have seen how the vegetative life is nourished by inorganic life, and 

 how vegetation in its turn operates changes in many ways upon the 

 surface of the earth, and even on the atmosphere. So again we find 

 that the animal kingdom maintains the most active relation with the 

 vegetable life and with the elements of the earth and of the air. We see 

 coral rocks and islands raised from the bottom of the sea by animated 

 beings apparently insignificant, which, existing before the creation of 

 Adam, now elevate their lofty tops as mountains of the continent ; we 

 see the animal kingdom penetrating into parts of the earth seemingly 

 impenetrable to all living creatures f ; moreover, we observe that here 

 also, where, according to the eternal laws of nature, the highest is 



• [p.iijchisc/ien Lehcn, Germ.] 



\ See on this subject the observations which G. R. Treviranus {Biologie, 

 vol. ii. p. 7) has collected from tlie instructive reports of other naturalists. 



