ii THE PLANT AND THE ANIMAL 125 



in itself the whole personality to which it belongs. 

 There is no real manifestation of life, we said, that 

 does not show us, in a rudimentary or latent state, the 

 characters of other manifestations. Conversely, when 

 we meet, on one line of evolution, a recollection, so to 

 speak, of what is developed along other lines, we must 

 conclude that we have before us dissociated elements of 

 one and the same original tendency. In this sense, 

 vegetables and animals represent the two great divergent 

 developments of life. Though the plant is distinguished 

 from the animal by fixity and insensibility, movement 

 and consciousness sleep in it as recollections which may 

 waken. But, beside these normally sleeping recollections, 

 there are others awake and active, just those, namely, 

 whose activity does not obstruct the development of 

 the elementary tendency itself. We may then formulate 

 this law : When a tendency splits up in the course of its 

 development^ each of the special tendencies which thus arise 

 tries to preserve and develop everything in the primitive 

 tendency that is not incompatible with the work for which 

 it is specialized. This explains precisely the fact we 

 dwelt on in the preceding chapter, viz., the formation 

 of identical complex mechanisms on independent lines 

 of evolution. Certain deep-seated analogies between 

 the animal and the vegetable have probably no other 

 cause : sexual generation is perhaps only a luxury for 

 the plant, but to the animal it was a necessity, and the 

 plant must have been driven to it by the same impetus 

 which impelled the animal thereto, a primitive, original 

 impetus, anterior to the separation of the two king 

 doms. The same may be said of the tendency of 

 the vegetable towards a growing complexity. This 

 tendency is essential to the animal kingdom, ever 

 tormented by the need of more and more extended 



