Perceptive Power of Vegetables , iji 



be capable ' of no other, fometimes amounts 

 to credibility. This every philofopher ex- 

 periences, in his refearches into nature ; and 

 the obfervation may ferve as an apoloo-y for 

 the following jeu d'ejprit; in which I fhall 

 attempt to fhew, by the feveral analogies of 

 organization, life, inflinfl, fpontaneity, and 

 felf-morion, that plants, like animals, are en- 

 dued with the powers, both of perception and 

 enjoyment. 



I. Vegetables bear fo near a fimilitude to 

 animals in their structure, that botanifts have 

 derived from anatomy and phyfiology, almoft 

 all the terms employed in the defcription of 

 them. A tree or flirub, they inform us, confnis 

 of a cuticle, cutis, and cellular membrane j 

 of veflels variouny difpofed, and adapted to 

 the tranfmiflion of different fluids; and of a 

 ligneous, or bony fubftance, covering and 

 defending a pith or marrow. Such organization 

 evidently belongs not to inanimate matter; 

 and when we obferve, in vegetables, that it 

 is connected with, or inftrumental to the powers 

 of growth, of fclf-prefervation, of motion, and 

 of feminal increafe, we cannot hefitate to afcribe 

 to them a living principle. And by admittin.o- 

 this attribute, we advance a (lep higher in the 

 analogy we are purfuing. For, the idea of life 

 naturally implies fome degree of perceptivity: 

 And wherever perception refides, a greater or 



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