io8 Evolution of Life and Fo^tn. 



peated over and over again, the life within the minerals 

 vibrates with ever increasing rapidity, and the 

 matter yields to it with ever greater readiness, until 

 .a stage of plasticity is reached at which the begin- 

 nings of the vegetable world can be brought into 

 existence. Between mineral and plant in the lowest 

 stages no definite dividing line can be drawn by 

 science. So general is this absence of dividing lines 

 in nature that a separate kingdom has been recog- 

 nised as including low types of both vegetable and 

 animal, and between the vegetable and mineral 

 kingdoms a class is recognised in which the rigid 

 crystal which belongs to the mineral kingdom 

 has become the plastic crystalloid that belongs to 

 the vegetable; maintaining the outline of the mineral 

 form, but showing the plasticity of the vegetable, 

 and thus yielding far more readily to the 

 moulding influences of the life within. The 

 life thus encased in more plastic material re- 

 ceives vibrations from without more easily and 

 responds more strongly, until in the ascent that it 

 is beginning to make, it adds the early beginnings 

 of a power of consciousness that in the mineral was 

 not present. We call it sensation : the power of feel- 

 ing pleasure and pain, the power of responding to 

 the outside impact by a feeling within the life. 

 After the life in the mineral has developed the power 



