What are Animals and Plants? ^jy 



Itegory of QUALITY out of the category of QUANTITY, 

 lich every one at all versed in philosophy will recognise 

 a self-evident absurdity. 

 Please recollect that we are in no way objecting to the 

 e of such conceptions as that of the ' transformation of 

 rce ' for the purpose of aiding calculations and for general 

 ' advance in physical science; we only object to the incautious 

 l^^e of such language as may lead persons to believe that 

 I^Jorces ' are substances, or to the notion that such conceptions 

 * are really profound truths; as if we really knew physical 

 motion better than we do thought or will. 



What essential distinction, then, does there remain to 

 draw between living beings and beings devoid of life ? There 

 remains that distinction which was drawn more than two 

 thousand two hundred years ago by the greatest of philo- 

 sophers, and which has the advantage of agreeing with 

 what common-sense teUs us to-day. 



It is the view that each living being, in addition to 

 possessing those properties of which the senses inform us, 

 also possesses, or rather is, a unifying principle, ' a principle 

 vf individvAition ' which altogether escapes the cognisance of 

 our senses, though reflective reason agrees with common- 

 sense in assuring us that it is by it that an animal concen- 

 trates into one centre the multitude of impressions made 

 simultaneously and successively upon its various organs 

 of sense. 



This view, at once^popular and philosophic, has of late 

 }ears received a remarkable adhesion from one who has 

 been amongst the foremost advocates of a mechanical con- 

 ception of nature. We refer to the German philosopher, 

 Hermann Lotze,^ a man free altogether from theological or 

 other prejudices or prepossessions. Moved alone by a pro- 

 found and patient exercise of his reason, he has come to 



^ See ante, p. 279. 



