^yS What are Animals and Plants ? 



enunciate in the most uncompromising way that view (so 

 long ago maintained by Aristotle), the existence in each 

 living being of a ' jpsyche' — a term most difficult to render 

 into our own tongue because of the misleading connotation 

 of the word ' soul/ which is its nearest English equivalent.^ 



The existence of such an internal principle in ourselves^ 

 is the most certain object of all knowledge. It is conceivable 

 that we may doubt as to the existence of our body, but it is 

 absolutely impossible to doubt the existence of a something 

 which is actually thinking and feeling, and which recollects 

 more or less of its own past. This knowledge, as to our own 

 nature, enables us to conceive the existence of a principle 

 of individuation in other living beings, though we can never 

 imagine such a thing, which, as Lotze says, is as impossible 

 as to know ?tow things look in the dark} 



The recognition of the existence of this principle, how- 

 ever, is a matter of philosophy, or pure science, and not of 

 mere physical science, which must ignore it, since it cannot 

 rise to its recognition without going beyond its own province, 

 which is nature, as cognisable to us in and by our senses. 



Nevertheless, physical science may serve to confirm the 

 teaching of philosophy, inasmuch as the whole tendency of 

 modern researches is to show that living creatures do not 

 arise except from antecedent Hving creatures and refutes 

 the notion of ' spontaneous generation.' We have no dis- 

 inclination to believe in spontaneous generation ; we confess, 

 it has been with reluctance that we have found ourselves 

 forced by experimental evidence — especially by the evidence 

 adduced by M. Pasteur, to whom we are all so greatly 

 indebted — to reject all belief in it. 



According to our present knowledge, then, a great gulf 

 yawns between the living world and the world devoid of 

 life — a gulf which nothing we can imagine seems capable 



1 See ante, p. 216, note. 2 ggg ^„^g^ p^ 287. 



